One Bad Day
by ack1308
Summary: What if several Worm characters had a really bad day, the sort of day from which there is no coming back? What happens to Brockton Bay then?
1. Chapter 1

**One Bad Day**

* * *

" _All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day."_  
\- **Joker** , _**The Killing Joke**_ [written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Brian Bolland]

* * *

 _Disclaimers:_

 _1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it._

 _2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. If I find something that canon does not cover, I will make stuff up. If canon then refutes me, I will revise. Do not bother me with fanon; corrections require citations._

 _3) I will accept any legitimate criticism of my work. However, I reserve the right to ignore anyone who says "That's wrong" without showing how it is wrong, and suggesting how it can be made right. Posting negative reviews from an anonymous account is a good way to have said reviews deleted._

* * *

 _Author's Note: This is an AU; as such, the character Hardcase has the powers of Browbeat._

* * *

 _ **Part One: Precursors**_

* * *

 **PRT HQ, Washington DC  
Thursday, December 2, 2010**

* * *

Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown put the phone on speaker and leaned back. "What is it?"

" _Ma'am, we have reports that the Simurgh is on the move."_

She sat up so abruptly that, if not for her ability to fly, she would have sent the chair over. "Is it an attack?"

" _Uncertain as yet, ma'am. She seems to be holding a steady altitude. But she's moving to a different location."_

"Where is that location?"

" _It seems to be somewhere over northern New England. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire. Maybe even Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island or New York."_

"That's a lot of area. With a lot of big cities."

" _Yes, ma'am. We're working to get more details."_

"Let me know the moment you've got something."

" _Yes, ma'am."_

* * *

High above Brockton Bay, the Simurgh let a smile play over her lips. She could not see the present; only the future or the past was clear to her. But to a being with her capabilities, the future was endlessly malleable. Not that what she was about to do was any great challenge to her. The merest of nudges would sent events tumbling like dominoes in the direction that she desired.

She exerted her power; far below, subtle divergences were set in motion.

* * *

 **Brockton Bay  
Friday Night, December 3, 2010**

* * *

Lisa looked up at the roof edge. "I think we lost her."

Grue coughed. "Good. How bad is it?"

"Let me get you into the light so I can have a look." With her assistance, he complied. Carefully, she unzipped his jacket and peeled his shirt away from the wounds; one in front, one in back. Under the yellow glare, his skin had the appearance of anthracite, and the blood looked purplish. But even in the poor light, she didn't like how much he was bleeding.

"It's not great," she muttered. "But if we keep pressure on it and get you to an emergency room -"

"No." He grunted with the pain. "Get me home, stitch me up. Emergency rooms have to call the cops for wounds like this, and I'll be helpless."

She tried again. "The boss. He's got to have doctors for this sort of thing. I'll call him."

"Yeah, good idea." She didn't like how faint his voice was getting. "Do it."

Making sure that he had his hands pressed firmly on the pad of cloth over each wound, she wiped the blood from her hands and pulled out her phone. There was no signal; she glanced at Grue, who gave her a nod, so she moved off down the alleyway. Finally, at the exit on to the street, she got some bars.

" _Hello?"_

"It's me. Shadow Stalker ambushed us. Grue's hurt. We need medical attention."

" _Where?"_

She gave him the address. "But tell them to hurry. I don't like the way he's bleeding."

" _I'll do my best."_

Ending the call, she hurried back toward where she'd left Grue. _He's going to be okay. He's going to be okay._

He was still there, slumped up against the dumpster where she'd left him. But there was someone in the alley with him now; a cloaked figure that Lisa knew all too well. As Lisa watched, the figure extended an arm toward Grue.

"No!" Lisa scrabbled for her pistol, but the blood crusting on her fingers made her a second too slow. There was the sound of an impact; Brian jerked as the arrow struck him in the middle of the chest. Shadow Stalker turned, just as Lisa brought up the pistol. Lisa fired four shots, as fast as she could. She thought she may have scored with one of them, but Shadow Stalker simply went to her immaterial form, laughter trailing away as she did so.

The vigilante turned Ward leaped upward, almost flying as she jumped from side to side of the alley in her shadow form. She paused at the top, and Lisa saw her go solid once more. Two words drifted back down to her. "You're next." Another mocking laugh, and Shadow Stalker was gone.

Lisa ran to Grue's side. More blood was welling around the arrow in his chest. Kneeling beside him, she unfastened his helmet strap and lifted it off. His eyes were dimming, but he focused on her.

"Lisa …" he whispered.

There were tears in her eyes. She'd never been all that close to Brian, but he had been her team leader, and he'd never been an asshole to her. "Brian. I'm sorry. Shouldn't have left you."

"Not … your fault. Need you … do something … for me."

She gritted her teeth. "I'll take her down, once and for all. She won't get away with this."

His breathing was obviously painful, and he was fading fast. "Not … her. Sister. Aisha." He began to say something else, but got as far as "T-" before he lost the impetus. The breath stopped rasping in his throat.

Uselessly, Lisa checked for a pulse in his throat. There was none. Her power filled in what he had been about to say. _Take care of her._

"I'll do that," she promised him. "I'll do that for you." Carefully, she closed his eyes, then kissed him gently on the forehead. Then she set about working the arrow from his chest. She knew that she was making it harder to prove that Shadow Stalker had murdered him, but she wasn't interested in police procedure and trials. _I'll find her and shove this into her guts myself._

Getting up, she stumbled from the alleyway.

* * *

Three blocks away, Sophia Hess muttered curses as she tightened the bandage on to the wound. The bitch had gotten her in the right shoulder. While the bullet had missed bone, it _had_ punched a hole through the deltoid, making it almost impossible to use the arm for anything. Such as shooting a certain smartass bitch right between the eyes.

"You'll get yours," she muttered. _But I won't be able to go out on patrol until this heals. Maybe I'll kick Hebert around a little more at school to make up for it._ Under her mask, a cruel smile spread across her face. "Yeah, that sounds like fun."

 _But first, I have to make sure nobody pins this on me._

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, she was back at the scene. Tattletale was nowhere around, which disappointed Sophia just a little. _I'd like to pay her back for this hole in my shoulder._

But there were more important things to take care of. Such as the body with the arrow-holes in it. _Cops see this, they'll know who did it. I can't go to juvey._

Rummaging one-handed through the dumpster, she came up with the perfect tool; a length of broomstick, broken off with a jagged point. Poising herself over the body, she slammed the pointed end down into the wound, driving it deep, twisting the wood so as to obliterate all traces of the previous arrow wound. Pulling it out, she repeated with the other one. Then she jammed it back into the first hole, leaving it standing like an obscene flagpole.

 _Okay, that's the evidence taken care of. Now to pin it on someone else._

It was a little awkward to tear open his shirt one-handed – left-handed at that – but she managed it. He had a magnificent set of abs, she noted. _Pity he had to die._ Taking another arrow, she dragged it across his flesh, moving outward from where the broomstick jutted upward from the wound that had killed him. The sharp metal parted his skin cleanly, leaving a straight line.

 _After this, nobody will believe they_ _ **didn't**_ _do it._

* * *

It was a little before midnight when Vicky spotted the dark-cloaked form leaning over the body. Swiftly, she dropped down into the alleyway. "Hey, what do you think you're doing?"

The cape turned, a little awkwardly. She – it was a teenage girl, maybe Vicky's age – had a bandage on her right shoulder, stained with blood. "Hey, hey, easy. I'm on your side. Shadow Stalker, of the Wards."

Vicky landed lightly on the garbage-strewn ground. "Sorry, didn't recognise you for a moment. What happened here?"

Shadow Stalker nodded to the body. "Saw a bunch of Empire guys attacking this one. I jumped in to help, but one of them shot me." Her left hand, the fingers of the glove blood-stained, reached up to touch her right shoulder. "By the time I got my head together, they'd done this to him and bolted. I was gonna call it in, just as soon as I finished bandaging myself."

"Shit." Vicky shook her head. "That's gotta suck. Is he -"

"No, that's what I was just checking." Shadow Stalker sounded upset; Vicky didn't blame her.

She grimaced as she looked down at him. He lay there next to a dumpster, arms splayed out, eyes closed. Save for the broomstick protruding upward from his chest, he could have been asleep.

Murder always affected her a little bit; someone who had been living, probably a good person, with friends and family. Ended. Finished. He looked like he had been a nice guy. Handsome, certainly.

Even without Shadow Stalker's testimony, it wouldn't have been hard to determine who had done the deed. They had as much as signed their work. Looking down at the swastika that had been carved across the young man's chest, Vicky made a private vow.

 _I'll find out which one of them did this to you, and make them pay._

* * *

 **The Dallon Household  
Saturday, December 4, 2010**

* * *

 _I turn forty in a few days._

Mark Dallon sat on the sofa, oblivious to Vicky's chatter as she worked out a homework problem with Amy. The TV, unnoticed, played out its artificial dramas in front of him.

 _What have I really done with my life?_

He looked around the living room, but he didn't see it as a record of his accomplishments. Instead, it appeared to him as a litany of failures. _Fleur died because I didn't think far enough ahead about the possible dangers of unmasking. The New Wave movement failed because of that._

It should have been a great and glorious legacy. Capes unmasking across the nation, proving that they were human, that they were ready to take on the responsibility of their actions. Instead, because of his short-sightedness, Fleur was dead and Lightstar had quit.

Because of his failures.

 _And I'll be forty in a few days, and I'll have accomplished what?_

The dark thoughts continued to circulate in his head, but he showed no outward sign of them.

 _Some days, it's barely worth the effort to get out of bed._

* * *

 **The Undersiders' Base  
Sunday, December 5, 2010**

* * *

When Lisa saw the caller ID on her phone, she didn't want to answer it. But she saw no way out of it. "Hello?"

" _Hello, Tattletale."_ It was, of course, Coil.

"What's going on?"

" _I received your report that Shadow Stalker killed Grue. You have my condolences."_

"Yeah, uh, thanks. I'll pass that on to the others."

" _You are aware that she successfully disguised the killing as an Empire Eighty-Eight murder, yes?"_

"What? No. No, that's not right. She should go down for this."

" _Tattletale."_

"What?" But she knew already.

" _You will not target Shadow Stalker. You will not find out her secret identity. You will have nothing to do with her. Am I clear?"_

She found herself getting angry. "But she _murdered_ Grue!"

" _And he could have died at the hands of Kaiser or Lung, had the circumstances been different. If you find out who she is, the chances are that you will take rash action that will probably endanger the smooth running of the Undersiders. Killing a Ward would bring all the forces of the Protectorate and PRT down on your heads. Publicly outing her would be almost as bad."_

"But I -"

" _Will do_ _ **nothing**_ _. That's an order."_

There was no arguing with him, she realised.

" … yes, sir."

* * *

 **Winslow High  
Monday, December 6, 2010**

* * *

"Watch it, Hebert!"

Taylor didn't have a chance to get out of the way; she was slammed into the locker as Sophia body-checked her, hard. A padlock gouged into her hip painfully, then she turned with her back to the metal, bringing her hands up defensively.

Sophia sneered. "What are you gonna do, Hebert? Fight me? _You?"_ She stood there, flanked by Emma and Madison, supremely confident. The only jarring note was the fact that her right arm was in a sling.

The words came out of Taylor's mouth before she could stop them. "I don't want to fight."

"Wimps never do." Sophia stepped up to her; before Taylor could react, Sophia rammed the heel of her left hand against the taller girl's breastbone, driving her back against the locker again. "And before you get any ideas, Hebert, I can beat your ass just as easily with one arm as with two." Her expression made it clear that she was looking forward to it.

Panicking, Taylor kicked out at Sophia; the black girl easily evaded the attack, then drove her own knee up into Taylor's stomach. Her world going red around the edges, Taylor doubled over, coughing and retching.

* * *

Emma watched as Sophia grabbed Taylor by the hair. Sophia was just preparing to drive her knee up into Taylor's face when Emma put a hand on her arm. "Maybe you better not."

Sophia turned to look at her. "What? You getting to be a weak sister again, like the wimp here?"

"No." Emma shook her head. "But if you do that, she'll have actual real injuries she can show Blackwell."

Sophia curled her lip. "Clumsy bitch tripped and fell down the stairs."

Emma shook her head. "Dad says visible injuries are bad. They make it a lot harder to disprove a claim."

With a grimace, Sophia let Taylor go; the skinny girl sank to her knees, still unable to breathe properly. "It's your lucky day, bitch. See you in PE class."

As they moved away, Madison piped up. "So Sophia, what happened to your arm anyway?"

Sophia turned to glare at her. "Strained my shoulder. Got a problem with that?"

"No, no problem."

 _Wow,_ thought Emma. _Sophia's being even more of a hardass than normal._

But so long as it wasn't aimed at her, she didn't have an issue with it.

* * *

 **The Dallon Household  
Wednesday, December 8, 2010**

* * *

"Where's your father gotten to?"

Amy looked up from the magazine she was reading. "I'm sorry?"

Carol Dallon's lips tightened slightly. "I _said,_ do you know where your father's gotten to? It's time for him to open his presents, and he's wandered off somewhere. Not to mention Victoria."

"I think she said something to Dean about showing him something in her room," Amy ventured. "But I'm not sure where Dad is. I can go find him if you want."

"Please do," Carol snapped; her tone made it clear that the 'please' was just a courtesy. "And tell Vicky and Dean to get down here as well. These presents aren't going to open themselves, you know."

"Okay." Amy got up, dropping the magazine on the chair. She wandered out of the living room and into the kitchen. Mark Dallon wasn't there. Carol's office was toward the back of the house, but the door was closed; she couldn't think of a reason that he'd be in there, so she turned her sights upward.

Climbing the stairs, she checked the bathroom door; it was open, and nobody was in there. Her parents' bedroom door was closed; she knocked gently, then opened it a crack. He wasn't in there, either. _Where_ _ **is**_ _he?_ She frowned. _He wouldn't have gone out on patrol on his own. Oh well, I'll check downstairs again. But while I'm up here …_

Distracted by the thought of where Mark might be, she didn't bother knocking on Vicky's bedroom door before she opened it. "Vicky, Dean, Mom says -"

That was as far as she got.

Vicky and Dean were entwined on the bed. Their eyes were closed; the looks on their faces showed what may have been agony, but she was fairly sure it was the opposite. Amy, like any curious teenager, had looked at porn more than once, but even if she hadn't, she would have recognised a sex act when she saw one. Right now, she was seeing more of Vicky than she had in quite some time, and _far_ more of Dean than she ever wanted to see. Her eyes opened wide, burning the image into her brain forever more.

Both Vicky and Dean turned to look at her, their faces identical masks of horror.

Pulling the door closed with a bang, she fled down the corridor. Her face flamed red as she tried to expunge what she'd seen from her brain. _Dean and Vicky. Oh, god. I can't handle this right now._ Her illicit attraction toward Vicky had been bad enough when she'd thought that Vicky and Dean were just at the hand-holding stage. But now their relationship was obviously much more than that. The knowledge tore her heart in two. _Vicky, Vicky, I love you more than he ever could. Can't you see that?_

Downstairs she stumbled, past the kitchen, into the back of the house. Carol might have said something as she passed by, but Amy had neither the will nor the wit to answer her right now. _I can't think. I need to be alone._

Pushing open the door to Carol's study, she lurched inside. It was cool and dark in here. That was good. She could gather herself, pretend to be a good daughter even while she was dying inside.

The creak alerted her; she finally looked up. In the dimness, she could see the dangling form.

She knew what it was, even as her hand went to the light switch. Frantically, she tried to stop her fingers from flipping the tiny plastic nub, but over it went. Light flared dramatically around Mark Dallon's head and shoulders.

He had used a belt. Tied it to the sturdy light fitting, then just … stepped off the desk.

All of that went through her mind in one searing moment. Looking up at him, silhouetted against the light, she could still see his suffused face, the protruding tongue. She didn't want to, but she reached out. One of his carpet slippers had fallen off. Her hand touched his bare foot.

He was still alive.

Not aware, not conscious. There was barely any brain activity at all. But there was life. _He could live, but as a vegetable._

 _What sort of a life would that be?_

 _I should save him, keep him alive._

 _Would he thank me for that?_

Then the decision was taken from her hands as the last fleeting echo of life fled forever, leaving her with her hand on a corpse. With a _thump,_ she backed up against the door, her shoulders hard against the wood. _Then_ she began to scream.

* * *

 **Brockton Bay  
Thursday, December 9, 2010**

* * *

Lisa eyed the teenage girl strutting down the street. Lime-green tights, near-microscopic top and shorts, a purple streak through her hair. _That's Aisha, all right._ She didn't need her power to figure out that the girl considered herself one tough cookie. _This is not gonna be a fun conversation._

Crossing the street ahead of Aisha, she slowed her pace until the younger girl was almost alongside her. Aisha glanced at her once as she passed, then again as Lisa increased speed to stay level with her.

 _I'll have to get her attention fast, or she'll brush me off._ "Aisha? I've got news about your brother."

That certainly got the girl's attention. "What? Who the fuck are you?"

Lisa took a deep breath. "My name's Lisa. I'm a friend of his."

"Well, you can go and tell him to get fucked. He was gonna take me to the Boardwalk on the weekend and he never showed." Aisha looked her up and down. "You his latest? He send you to grovel for him?"

"No, I'm not his girlfriend. I … I was his teammate."

Aisha tilted her head. "Teammate? What, in that martial arts thing he does?"

 _This is harder than I expected it to be._ "Aisha, I've got some bad news for you. About Brian. Why he couldn't make it."

The younger girl stopped, putting her hands on her hips. "Can't wait to hear _this_ one. He better be fuckin' _dead_ , or next time I see him, I'm gonna kick his ass so fuckin' hard …"

Lisa grimaced. The pain and loss were still raw. "Aisha, he _is_ dead. He was murdered on Friday night. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

Abruptly, she found herself sitting on the pavement, half-leaning against a shop-front. _What the fuck just happened?_

Aisha was just getting up as Lisa began to get her bearings back. The younger girl offered a hand; still a little dazed, Lisa accepted it. Aisha grunted, but managed to heave Lisa to her feet. "Okay then."

"Okay what?" Lisa was still having trouble tracking.

"Okay, now you're gonna tell me who, what, where and how. Brian mighta been an irritating douche, but he was my big brother, and _nobody_ kills my big brother and gets away with it."

Lisa shook her head. "That's not a good idea."

She found herself slammed against the shop-front, with Aisha's fists tangled in the front of her top. Aisha's face, with tears trickling unheeded down her cheeks, was mere inches from hers. "Fuckin' _tell_ me."

"All right. Let's go get something to eat, and I'll tell you."

* * *

The outdoor cafe was a little upscale from what Aisha was used to eating at, but Lisa was buying so she didn't give a shit. She found a table that was far enough away that nobody else would be able to hear what they were saying, and plunked herself down while Lisa did the ordering.

She didn't think she'd want anything to eat, but the sugar-powdered doughnuts smelled so good that she took a bite from one; before she knew it, she'd polished off two and was reaching for a third. With an effort of will, she pushed it away and turned to Lisa. "Okay. Give. Spill. I wanna know everything. What he was doing, who killed him. Why he was killed."

"Even knowing about what happened is dangerous -" Lisa began.

Aisha wasn't having any of it. "Fuck that. Brian was my _brother._ You owe me this."

She had to give the blonde some credit for persistence. "The last thing he said to me was to take care of you. If I told you who did it, you'd go after them. And that's likely to get _you_ killed."

"I said _fuck that!"_ Aisha hit the table with her fist. Lisa barely managed to capture her teacup before it would have tipped. "I want fucking _details."_

Lisa took a deep breath. "Okay. To start with, did you know Brian had powers?"

Aisha blinked. "Fuck. No. He was holding out on me. What sort of powers?"

"Darkness generation. He could generate it, like a cloud. He could see through it, but nobody else could. He was working as a supervillain. Grue, of the Undersiders. Making money to keep you out of your mother's hands." Lisa eyed her. "You never guessed?"

"Fuck. This is all news to me." Aisha shook her head. "I just thought he was good at finding part-time work."

Lisa shrugged slightly. "Depends on what you'd call 'part-time work'."

"Yeah, point. So, how'd he die?"

"You sure you want to know?" Lisa's expression was concerned.

Aisha didn't bother answering; the look she sent across the table was good enough.

Lisa sighed. "Okay, fine. It was Shadow Stalker."

"What, the vigilante?"

"Yeah. Well, no, she's a Ward now." Lisa wouldn't look her in the eye. "She had it in for Brian. She's supposed to be using non-lethal arrows, but she shot him with a real one. It was just a wound, but a bad one. When I was calling for help, she circled back around and murdered him."

* * *

" _Fuck."_ Aisha smacked the table again; the cutlery rattled. "You know who she really is? Where she lives?"

Lisa shook her head. "No. And I've been told not to find out. My boss doesn't want us getting into a pissing match with the Protectorate."

"No, no, no, fuck that." Aisha was looking more pissed by the second. "We don't just let this fucking _bitch_ murder my brother and walk away."

Lisa began to get worried. _Aisha's not about to let this go. If she starts running around shooting her mouth off, she could get me in serious trouble. Worse, Shadow Stalker could find out and decide to target_ _ **her.**_ "Aisha, I -"

She blinked. _What was I saying?_ She'd been in a fugue, thinking about Brian's death. _Talking to myself. It's the first sign of madness._

Plucking a sugar-sprinkled doughnut off the plate, she took a bite, then washed it down with a sip of tea. _What was I doing again?_ But try as she might, she couldn't remember. _Oh well, it'll come to me._

Unnoticed, one of the remaining doughnuts disappeared.

* * *

 **Brockton Bay Cemetery  
Sunday, December 12, 2010**

* * *

" … a faithful husband and a loving father, who was taken from his family all too soon …"

The priest droned on, but Amy tuned him out. She stood, dressed in black, alongside Vicky and Carol, in her own personal pool of misery and guilt. Carol's air of disapproval was stronger than normal, while Vicky was having trouble keeping her aura in check. Flashes of fear, almost subliminal, came and went, but Amy ignored those. She knew what Vicky was really thinking; it was plain in her eyes.

 _She thinks I could have saved him._

 _I really should have. He was the only member of this family who didn't have something I desperately wanted but could not have, or who wasn't making impossible demands of me._

Part of her tried to use logic to overcome her guilt. It was a losing battle. _Even if I had saved him, brain death was setting in. He'd never have been more than a drooling hulk._

 _Unless I fixed his brain._

Brutal honesty cut in then. _Could I have? I've never fixed a brain before. I don't know if I could bring someone back from that close to death, make their brain all better._

 _But I didn't even try._ Closing her eyes, she let the hot, stinging tears slip from between the lids. _I let him die while I agonised over the choice. Some superhero I am. Some_ _ **daughter**_ _I am._

The guilt was almost more than she could bear.

* * *

"Ames, I gotta talk to you."

Amy looked around; the small crowd was dispersing to their cars. Some of the capes were walking to the edge of the cemetery then flying off. Carol was being consoled by Lady Photon and Manpower, a little way away. Vicky was the only one near to her; even Dean, in costume as Gallant, was standing off to give them privacy.

 _I want to talk to you too. I want to tell you how much I love you._ But she wouldn't. She couldn't. She knew that. _Coward._

"Uh, what about?" she asked dully, but she knew already. _Here it comes._

"Was Dad still alive when you found him?"

 _Oh, shit. It's worse than I thought._ For a long, fatal moment, she hesitated.

"He was, wasn't he?" Vicky's voice was full of suspicion. "Did you _let_ him die?"

Amy took a deep breath. "He was almost dead. He slipped away just as I touched him. But -"

"But you could've saved him." Vicky stared at her. "Why didn't you? Didn't you love him?"

Guilt, fed by Vicky's words, wracked her very soul. "I _did_. I did love him. But if he'd lived – if I'd even _managed_ to save him – he would've been a drooling imbecile. His brain had been starved of oxygen for too long, and -"

"But you could've fixed that, too." There was certainty in her sister's tone.

"I don't _know!"_ Amy hissed the last word. "I've never _done_ that before! I might've failed! He might've come back wrong! There's so many things that can go _really badly_ wrong when you're dealing with the brain!" Her voice didn't get any louder, but it was much more intense; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dean's head come up. _He can feel my emotions. He could probably feel them if he was in_ _ **Boston**_ _._

"But you still could've tried." Vicky was implacable.

Amy wanted to scream, to pull her hair out. Vicky just didn't _understand._ "I don't do brains for a _reason."_ Gritting her teeth, she told her first lie. "I – I don't really think I could have saved him. He was too far gone."

Vicky stared at her. "Then why didn't you do it earlier?"

 _Oh, god. Here it comes._ But she had to play dumb, not give any indication how often her own mind had been over this territory. "Earlier?"

"You knew he had chronic depression. You could've fixed that, yeah?"

 _A matter of brain chemistry. Easily._ "Vicky, I don't do brains for a _reason._ I've never done that sort of thing before. And I wasn't going to experiment on my _Dad."_

Vicky's voice was bitter. "So because of your precious _principles,_ Dad's dead. Gone. Because you don't work with _brains."_ She made it sound so petty.

 _Please don't go there._ But Vicky already had. Amy took a deep breath. _I don't want to say this, but you're hurting me too much._ "You could have stopped it, too."

Jolted, Vicky stared at her. "What? What do you mean?"

Amy forced herself to meet her sister's eyes. "He _listened_ to you. You could've made him take his meds. And when it happened … Dean was over. Why didn't _he_ pick up on what Dad was about to do, through his emotions?" She knew the answer. They both did. _Because you were distracting him with your body._

It wasn't often that she saw Vicky on the back foot. "I -" Involuntarily, her sister glanced around at Carol. "You haven't told Mom, have you?"

"No, I haven't. But I don't know that I shouldn't." _She might ban you from seeing Dean._ The thought gave her a guilty thrill.

Vicky's eyes widened. "No. Don't. Please don't. I'll do your homework for a month."

 _One kiss. That's all I ask. Just one kiss._ But Amy knew that, given that opening, her demands would never cease. _I want you so badly that I don't dare open that can of worms._ "Save it. Just don't _bug_ me any more, okay?"

Vicky's look of relief was almost comical. "Sure thing. Subject dropped, over and out. We good?"

Amy managed a wan smile and hugged Vicky. She felt her sister's arms going around her. The contact felt good; _too_ good. _Vicky must be letting her aura slip again._ The urge to just reach up and kiss her sister was almost overpowering, but she repressed it. _It would ruin everything._

"Yeah," she murmured. "We're good."

 _Liar._

* * *

 **Brockton Bay  
Monday, December 13, 2010**

* * *

Taylor swung down off the bus and started on the two-block walk to her house. _Oh god, I am_ _ **so**_ _glad that it's only one week till Christmas vacation._ She limped a little as she walked, courtesy of bruises acquired from impacts with a wide variety of things; lockers, walls, a door, the floor, desks and so forth. Sophia had been getting particularly vicious of late; however, getting anything done about it was proving to be nigh-impossible.

 _I just have to tough it out till Christmas. Then I can relax, if only for a few days. And maybe afterward Sophia will find someone else to torment._ Deep down, she knew that this was merely wishful thinking, but she refused to let that thought surface. Instead, another one bobbed up.

 _Maybe I should tell Dad._

She wasn't quite sure what he could do for her. Emma was certain to lie to cover for Sophia and herself, and Mr Barnes had been Dad's friend for years and years. _He might even believe Emma over me._ This was one of the reasons she had been reluctant to tell him what was going on to this point. Another was the deep-down knowledge that when things got really bad after Mom had died, he had … folded. Given up. Failed her.

 _But this time might be different. This time, he might actually be able to stand up and help me._

She clung to that thought all the way home. _Maybe he can help._

* * *

Danny moved the papers around on the kitchen table, then wrote a figure in the corner of one. It was a depressingly small figure. Compressing his lips, he wrote down more figures, drew a line under them, and added them up. It was still a depressingly small figure, but a little less grim than before.

The front door clicked open, and Taylor entered. "Hi, Dad," she greeted him.

"Hi, Taylor." He didn't look up.

"Dad, I -" She paused. "What's the matter?"

He pushed his glasses back up his nose to their proper place, then looked at her. She looked serious, as always. "Taylor, come sit down for a moment."

Obediently, she came and pulled out a chair. "Dad, what's up? You're scaring me."

He took a deep breath. "Taylor, you need to know that the Dockworkers are going through some hard times."

Behind her glasses, her eyes widened. "Dad – have you been _fired?"_

Hastily, he shook his head. "No, thank God. They're always going to need a head of hiring. Even if there's nobody to hire. But there's less money coming in, so we've all had to accept pay cuts. So we're going to have to tighten our belts a little."

"Uh … what does that mean?"

He grimaced. "It means that we can't really afford to do anything special over Christmas, kiddo. And I might have to sell the car. I'm sorry. But with the price of gasoline being what it is …"

But she was already nodding. "Right, right, I got it. Bus only."

"Yeah." He smiled wearily. "Bus only." He paused. "Did you want something?"

"No, it's fine, Dad. Nothing, really."

Standing up, she turned and went out into the entrance hall; a moment later, he heard her climbing the stairs. He shifted his attention back to the papers, trying to squeeze more dollars out of the numbers there.

It was, he suspected, a futile exercise.

* * *

 **The Undersiders' Base  
Tuesday, December 14, 2010**

* * *

Just like the last time, when Lisa saw the caller ID on her phone, she didn't want to answer it. _He's assigning the team a new leader._ But she saw no way out of it. "Hello?"

" _Hello, Tattletale."_

"It's a bad idea."

He showed no sign of surprise that she had divined the reason that he had called. _"Explain."_

"It's either too soon or too late. If you'd sent a new leader in immediately after Grue died, he could have helped us through the grieving process. Learned about how we work as a team. Or you could have waited a few more weeks, until we had gotten over the shock."

" _The only person who's going through a grieving process is you. Regent and Bitch don't really care. They just need someone to tell them what to do."_

"And why can't I be that person? They do what I tell them."

" _That's the bad idea that you were referring to earlier. I know how ambitious you are. I simply can't trust you to be in charge of the Undersiders and not turn them to work against me."_

"Boss -"

" _My mind is made up. Your new leader will be arriving within the week."_

"Can you give me _anything_ to go on, so I can let the others know?"

" _Just this. Consider his orders to be my orders. If I know you, you've gotten a taste for independence. But if I find that you've been insubordinate to him, I will be displeased. If anything untoward happens to him and I find that you're at fault … expect me to be_ _ **very**_ _displeased."_

Lisa swallowed. She wasn't quite sure what Coil being _very_ displeased would result in, and she didn't want to find out the hard way. "Okay. Um. Sure. Can I at least get a name?"

" _He goes by the name Hardcase. Don't bother looking on the PHO boards for a file; he doesn't have one yet."_

He did know her all too well. "Uh, right. Hardcase."

" _Just remember, his orders are my orders. And if anything happens to him …"_ He didn't need to finish the sentence.

"I'll keep that in mind."

" _See that you do."_

* * *

 **Brockton Bay  
Wednesday Night, December 15, 2010**

* * *

Sophia flexed her shoulder experimentally. It was still a little sore, but it seemed to have healed all right. _Nearly two weeks out of commission. Seriously, why couldn't Piggy have talked to Panacea or someone? I could've been out there kicking ass long ago._

Taking a running leap, she turned to shadow and let herself glide to the next building. Returning to solid form, she stuck the landing and ran across the rooftop to the other side. Another leap, another long glide. _Oh, yeah. I still got it._

Her Wards phone rang. She ignored it. _That'll be Kid Loser calling to bitch about how I ditched him to patrol solo. He can suck it._

Another sound caught her attention; this time it was a burglar alarm. _A break-in? Just what I need for a nice warm-up._

* * *

Aisha glanced back over her shoulder, then quickened her pace slightly. Behind her, the three Empire Eighty-Eight skinheads kept up, even closing the gap slightly. She did her best to make her movements appear panicky. _Come on, take the bait …_

And then, up ahead, three more turned the corner. She pretended not to see them, hurrying forward. The ones behind kept coming. _This is gonna be close._

 _There._ The liquor store shop-front she was looking for. It even had an alcove. She ducked in there, picking up the pry-bar she had left there several hours before.

"You really didn't think you could hide in here, did you?" The guy who seemed to be in charge of the skinheads had a couple of swastika tattoos and several missing teeth.

The original plan had been to act meek and scared, but Aisha had found that she just couldn't do that. So she went with being herself. "Fuck you, asshole," she spat, brandishing the pry-bar. "You can bite me."

"I'll do more than bite you, you little black whore," he grunted, moving forward. "You're gonna fuckin' pay toll. And _then_ you're gonna pay for that little comment."

"You fuckin' wish." She relaxed her control over her power then. It never got old, the way they blinked and looked around, wondering what they were doing. As far as they were concerned, she didn't exist.

Turning, she used the pry-bar to smash the glass of the shopfront door. An alarm went off, the clangour loud in her ears. They were just beginning to react when she placed the bar in the leader's hand, folding his fingers around it. He looked down at the pry-bar, then at the smashed glass.

Sometimes they'd jump one way, sometimes they'd jump another. But these were _criminals_ , used to breaking things and taking things. Certain actions were conditioned reflexes.

Not that Aisha was thinking quite that deeply. She just stepped out of the way and let him make his own mind up. He didn't take long.

"Come on," he shouted over the alarm. "We haven't got long!" Stepping forward, he wedged the pry-bar into the door-jamb and heaved. Metal shrieked and wood splintered; the door came open reluctantly.

Aisha strolled across to the other side of the street. Reaching into her jacket, she pulled out t a water-bottle and took a drink. She'd been pulling variations on this stunt over the last five nights since she had stolen the motorcycle; lure thugs to a place where there was an alarm. Set off alarm. Wait.

She had done this over and over again, more times than she wanted to count, and all she got was confused goons, the occasional cop, and Armsmaster once. This was, according to everything she had heard, the area that Shadow Stalker usually worked. _Why isn't she here?_

With a sigh, she tucked the water-bottle back into her jacket pocket. The Empire assholes were starting to emerge from the store, laden with their ill-gotten gains. _Looks like a bust._

Just as she was turning away, she heard the shout of alarm.

Shadow Stalker arrived like an avenging angel. She hit first one goon, then another, never stopping long enough to get hit back. Cans rolled across the pavement, while bottles shattered as they were dropped. The sharp odour of spilled liquor came to Aisha's nose. Shadow Stalker's crossbows were in hand; she shot one goon after another, dropping them to the ground.

 _Yes! Yes! Fucking_ _ **yes!**_ Aisha hurried across the street, then paused as she saw one of the thugs producing a pistol. _Whoa, fuck._ This forget-me crap, or whatever it was, worked like a charm on people, but bullets would still go straight through her, and not in a good way.

She dived for cover behind a telephone pole as several shots rang out. None of them came near her, for which she was profoundly grateful. However, the fighting was still going on, so Shadow Stalker hadn't been hit either, which was kind of sucky.

The vigilante kicked one man, then punched another in the throat. She used the second one for cover and nailed the gunman with another arrow; the skinhead folded like a cheap suit. Seeing her chance, Aisha climbed to her feet and scuttled over to the nearest prone thug. _Come on, you've gotta have gun or a knife or something._

With a grunt, she rolled him over, and there it was. Clipped on to his belt, in a scuffed leather sheath, he had a knife with a swastika at the top of the handle. Aisha didn't care; she pulled it free, then headed for the fight.

There were only two skinheads left on their feet, and they were hampered by the fact that Shadow Stalker never stayed solid for more than a second at a time. She was only a teenage girl, Aisha could see that, so she couldn't put them down with a single hit. But she could hit and then evade, something that she was obviously very practised at doing. _See if you can dodge someone you can't see coming, bitch._

Unfortunately, Aisha quickly found that interfering in a fight between two grown men and a cape who could go insubstantial was still very hazardous. Nobody knew she was there, but that didn't make it any easier for her. They weren't standing still to trade blows; they were moving, turning, throwing punches and kicks. Shadow Stalker's blows hit, while theirs didn't, but it didn't make Aisha's job any easier. _Come on, you chickenshits. At least hold her in one place for two seconds._

But it was not to be. Shadow Stalker kicked one in the groin, then went insubstantial, rolled _through_ her opponent as he folded, then came up with a crossbow aimed at the other. A sharp _twang_ and he went down.

 _Okay, fine. I'll do it myself._ Aisha stepped up to Shadow Stalker, who was walking around, peering at her opponents. One groaned and began to get up; the vigilante kicked him viciously in the face. Aisha couldn't fault her actions; the Empire Eighty-Eight was about on the bottom rung as far as she was concerned, too.

But the bitch had killed Brian, so she had to go down. Closing the distance, Aisha stabbed Shadow Stalker in the back. Or at least, she tried to; the knife hit the back of the vigilante's cloak, then stopped dead. As Shadow Stalker looked around curiously, Aisha swore out loud. The bitch was wearing body armour.

 _Okay, let's try this again._ Shadow Stalker still had no idea that she was being attacked; Aisha swung the knife at her throat. However, just as she did so, Shadow Stalker turned away; the blade slashed across her upper arm instead. Cloth parted and blood flowed.

"The fuck?" Shadow Stalker looked down at the wound; the backswing glanced off the hard material of her mask. "When did any of those fuckers tag me?"

Gathering herself, Aisha lunged forward, the point of her knife aiming at Shadow Stalker's throat. But just as she did so, the vigilante went insubstantial and leaped upward, scaling the side of the building far faster than Aisha could have climbed it.

 _Oh, for fuck's sake._ Aisha darted back to the guy she'd stolen the knife off. Wrenching the sheath from his belt, she shoved the blade into it, then clipped it on to her belt. Looking up, she could still see Shadow Stalker on the edge of the rooftop. She seemed to be bandaging the wound.

 _I can't lose her this time._ Ducking back into the alley, Aisha wheeled out the motorcycle she had stolen earlier in the week. Kicking it over, she kept her eyes focused on the edge of the roof, waiting to see what Shadow Stalker did next.

* * *

Sophia finished bandaging the slash on her upper arm. _Can't believe one of those assholes managed to cut me, without me even noticing. Fuck, this was not a good start to my night. Triumph's gonna be all over my ass for ditching Kid Loser and then getting hurt._

Carefully, she worked the arm back and forth. The bleeding had stopped, but it hurt like a cast-iron bitch, and she was pretty sure that it would slow her down if she got into another fight. With an aggravated sigh, she turned to shadow and leaped from the rooftop. _Time to go home and do some stitching. If I'm careful, nobody will notice I've been injured, and I don't have to go off duty again._

* * *

The only reason that Aisha managed to keep up with her as long as she did was the lack of traffic. There were so few other cars out there that she could ride on the wrong side of the road and run red lights with little in the way of danger. However, doing that _and_ keeping track of Shadow Stalker was not the easiest thing in the world. She hung on to the vigilante's trail for three blocks, then lost her.

" _Fuck."_

Pulling over to the side of the road, she dug a much-folded map of the city from a saddlebag. Opening it over the fuel tank, she drew two crosses with a stub of pencil; one was the location of the liquor store, and the other was the last point where she had seen Shadow Stalker.

 _Draw a line through this, and I've got a direction. It's not a location, but it's a start._

* * *

End of Part One


	2. Chapter 2

**One Bad Day**

* * *

 _ **Part Two: One Bad Day**_

* * *

 **Winslow High School  
December 22, 2010**

* * *

"Okay, this is the last day of school," Emma reminded the other two. "If you've got any ideas for how to make Hebert cry, today's the day."

"Still think we should've gone with the locker thing," Madison said. "It woulda been fuckin' _awesome."_

"We can still do it," Sophia pointed out. "Sneak back into school after it's closed and do what we want. Right now? We make sure that she _remembers_ today."

"Okay, you know how she always disappears around lunchtime?" Madison grinned. "Found out where she goes."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Third floor bathrooms," Madison revealed. "Watched her go in there yesterday with her lunch."

Sophia's smile was vicious. "Fuckin' _yes."_

The trio quickened their pace along the corridor.

* * *

 _Oh, for fuck's sake._

Aisha had tried to keep up with the three girls both normally and using her powers. But while the crowd parted for those three, it didn't for her, whether people knew she was there or not.

It had taken until last night to get another line on Shadow Stalker's home location. Aisha had drawn the second line on the map, then gone and looked over the area where they intersected. There had been no way she could search all the houses, but then she'd had a flash of brilliance.

Only one bus line ran through the area, taking kids to school. Shadow Stalker was a teenager; she had to go to school. She would be taking the bus in the morning.

Aisha had gotten on the bus and ridden it through that area. At stop after stop, she had scrutinised the people getting on. Most were the wrong skin colour or had the wrong hair colour, or something else that didn't fit. But by the time the bus left the area, she had it nailed down to three suspects. She watched those three, seeing how they acted around others. One stood out from the others.

When that girl got off the bus, so did she. At Winslow High School. _Now all I have to do is make sure it's really Shadow Stalker._ She didn't want to kill the wrong one, after all. _If it's not her, I'll go back and try again._

* * *

 **The Undersiders' Base**

* * *

"Hey, Lisa. Hold up."

Lisa turned at the doorway and looked back. Hardcase was sprawled on the couch, jacket open. At the moment, he was six feet tall and sported an impressive set of abs. But he could alter his height as easily as he could change his weight or his facial features. He was also, Lisa was certain, a borderline psychopath.

"What is it? I'm just going out." Regent had already gone out somewhere, and Bitch was walking her dogs. Lisa didn't want to spend another moment with Hardcase's eyes boring into her, undressing her in his mind.

"No. Stay. I want to talk to you."

"Can it wait?"

"No. It can't." He gestured. "Get back here. That's an order."

 _Which Coil told me I had to follow._ Reluctantly, Lisa turned and walked back into the living area. "Okay, so what's up?"

"Siddown." Hardcase patted the sofa beside him. Even more reluctantly, Lisa sat. "Now, when I was hired for this job, the boss warned me that you might be a little bit of a handful. Your power's useful as fuck, but it doesn't help when you're second-guessing me all the time."

 _You want us to kill people. The Undersiders don't work that way._ But she didn't say anything.

"So let's get one thing straight. When we're on a job, you do things _my_ way, _every_ time. You don't second-guess me, and when one of the others looks at you instead of me, you fuckin' tell them to look at _me._ You got it?"

Slowly, she nodded. "I got it."

"But the trouble is," he went on as if she hadn't spoken, "I don't think you _really_ got it. I don't think you really understand who's in fuckin' _charge_ here. I want to be sure that you're gonna follow every order I give you, any time, any place."

Terror flashed through her as her power filled in what he wasn't saying. _Oh, shit. Oh, no. No. Not that._ She started to jump up, but he was too fast. His meaty hand wrapped around her forearm. "No -"

"I'm sorry, what the fuck was that?" He pulled her to him. With his free hand, he pulled down his zipper. "Now, I'm gonna let you guess at my first order."

* * *

 **Empire Eighty-Eight Territory**

* * *

"Okay, I'm gonna ask you one more time," Vicky snarled. She was hovering five feet above the pavement, holding the Empire skinhead another two feet in the air by the front of his shirt. "Who killed Brian Laborn?"

"And I'm tellin' you, I don't know no fuckin' Brian Laborn," blustered the thug.

"The guy who got killed three weeks ago, in the alleyway off of Findlater," Vicky shook him, as if to jog his memory. "He had a broomstick shoved through his chest, and a swastika carved around it. Come on, that's a bit obvious even for you guys. What was it? Some kind of initiation? All I need's a name, and you can go back to being gutter scum."

"And for the last fuckin' time, you stupid fuckin' bitch, I got no idea what you're fuckin' talking about." Abruptly, the Empire thug raised his arms, slipping out of the loose jacket. He hit the ground and rolled, then got up and bolted.

Vicky's anger boiled over. _Call_ _ **me**_ _a stupid fucking bitch, will you?_ A dumpster sat nearby; she swooped in and kicked it. The metal dented deeply as it was launched in a ballistic arc toward the guy. _It'll just clip him and -_

But then, as her eyes widened, the lid came open; even as the corner of the dumpster caught him across the back, the edge of the lid smashed across the back of his skull. He went down, sprawled like a rag doll, as the dumpster flew on, crashing on to its side and skidding several yards.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god." She landed beside him, reaching down to feel for a pulse. There was one, but it was very weak and thready. The back of his skull looked … misshapen. "Oh, shit. Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck."_

Yanking her phone out, she pressed numbers hastily.

" _Vicky? What's up?"_

"Ames, I need your help."

There was a long hesitation. _"Where are you?"_

"I'm at the corner of China and Weston. Come quick. Don't tell anyone where you're going."

" _What? What are you doing out of school?"_

"I'm investigating that murder. But I need your _help."_

" _Why? What's happened? Are you hurt?"_

She could hear the desperation in her own voice. "Just get here fast. _Please."_

Another long hesitation. _"Okay. But this better be good."_

"I will _so_ owe you."

" _I know."_

* * *

 **Winslow High School**

* * *

Taylor sighed as she climbed the stairs to the third floor girls' bathrooms. It was lunchtime, which meant that the day was half over. But already, it had proven to be a very stressful day. Madison and Julia had proven to be both innovative and relentless in World Affairs, with each one ready to draw Mr Gladly's attention if he seemed about to notice what the other was pulling on Taylor.

Prior to that, Physical Education had been a trial, with Sophia taking every opportunity to bump, elbow-jab or trip her. Worse, other boys and girls had gotten into the act every time Mr Johannsen turned his back. It wasn't as if they even knew her, but Sophia was moderately popular and Taylor was not. She felt she had bruises over every inch of her body that was covered by her clothing. Gym clothes at that; Sophia had revived an old favourite and tossed her regular clothes into the shower after PE, soaking them so that she had to wear her sweaty gym clothes to class. When she walked into World Affairs, at least half the class had turned toward her and held their noses.

That hadn't even been the start of it. None of her bullies were in Computers, but they didn't need to be. Her email inbox had been jammed full yet again; insults bordering from the subtle to the blatant ruled the day. As fast as she deleted them, they came in once more, making it impossible for her to use the account for anything. So she had opened yet another one; before the class was half over, three more taunting emails had ended up in it.

 _I've had enough. Seriously. All I want is for the day to end. To go home and cry._ To be caught crying in school would be social suicide, even worse than snitching. It would give the bullies even more ammunition than Emma already had on her.

Pushing open the bathroom door, she avoided three girls as they left, anxiously scanning the crowd already there for familiar faces. There were none that she knew, but then, not knowing them merely meant that they'd have more of a chance to pull a prank before she realised what was going on. Moving to an empty corner, she held her backpack tightly to herself while she waited for a stall to become vacant.

One did, so she ducked in as the other girl exited. Locking the door, she sighed in not-quite-relief as she sat down on the toilet lid. It was going to keep happening after lunch, she knew. This was just a respite. But it was all she had.

Opening the backpack, she took out her bag lunch and a book she'd been meaning to read. Losing herself in the pages of a novel was about the most she could do to escape the constant harassment at school, these days. Taking the pita wrap from the brown paper bag, she began to nibble on it as she opened the book.

Too late, she registered that the noise level outside the stall had dropped dramatically. In fact, the only voices out there were whispers. She blinked. _Oh, shit. That's not good._

A moment later, she was proven right by a clunking noise from _above_ her. Looking up, she saw the rectangular end of some kind of plastic bin resting on the top of the partition. Dropping everything, she leaped to her feet and tried to push the door open. It held firm. _Someone's holding it shut._

The deluge that descended on her at that moment smelled worse than anything she had ever experienced before. As she gasped and sputtered and tried to wipe it out of her eyes, a _second_ torrent of evil-smelling material washed over her, leaving small objects lodged in her hair and on her glasses. Then darkness descended as something fell over her head, sliding down over her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't struggle. When she tried to inhale, the noxious smell, along with some of the fluid, went into her mouth and up her nose, and she vomited convulsively, all over herself and the inside of whatever was imprisoning her arms.

Falling to the floor, she jerked and screamed and struggled, trying to free herself. _I can't breathe. I can't get free. I'll die in here._ She vomited again and again, bringing up everything she had eaten over the last day. Her glasses had fallen off; the stuff was getting in her eyes, stinging them.

There was no way out.

* * *

Aisha had lost the three girls in the crowd, but she had remembered what the petite one had said. _Third floor bathrooms, at lunch time._

So, at lunch time, she had been up on the third floor, in the girls' bathrooms. She hadn't paid much attention when the skinny girl came in, but she was intrigued when Shadow Stalker and the other girls had come in and started clearing the bathroom. While the redhead leaned against the stall door, Shadow Stalker and the petite one each took the top off of a feminine-hygiene bin. Aisha blinked; she thought she knew what was going to happen, but she couldn't believe it.

As the screams and choking sounds arose from the stall a moment later, she believed it all right. The three bullies leaned against the wall, convulsing in laughter. While they were thus occupied, Aisha stepped up to the stall and pulled it open. She was just kneeling down to pull the container off the girl's head – she was so skinny that it had been jammed all the way down to her elbows – _something_ happened. One moment, Aisha was crouching in the mess that included horribly stinking used feminine items, and the next she was _sitting_ in them.

 _What the fuck was that?_

Outside the stall, she could hear concerned voices, asking 'Sophia' if she was all right. Sophia snapped back angrily; from the other sounds, she was also climbing to her feet. _Whatever it was, it got her too._

Ignoring the muck now soaking into her tights, Aisha took a good grip on the disposal bin and pulled it free of the skinny girl's head and shoulders. A pair of glasses clattered to the tiles; she picked them up, wiped them as best she could, and put them back on the feebly moving girl's face.

"Okay," she murmured. "I'll just leave you here and -" She was going to finish with 'go get help', but then the girl moved again. Aisha scrambled out of the way as she actually _got up._

 _Fuck, she's tougher than I'll ever be._

* * *

Taylor wasn't quite sure what was going on, but the bin was off of her head and she had her glasses back on. Her eyes were still stinging, but at least she could see. There was a weird buzzing in the back of her mind, and flashes of light going off at random behind her eyes. She was also _pissed as hell._

Clambering to her feet, Taylor pushed open the stall door with one hand. The three bitches were right there; they began to turn toward her, just as she used her other hand to heave the bin at them. It arced through the air, on a direct collision course with Sophia's head. The dark-skinned girl saw it coming, almost too late. And then, as Taylor watched disbelievingly, her form _blurred;_ the bin flew _through_ her, bouncing off of the bench behind, then clattering harmlessly to the floor.

The anger within her grew as she connected the dots. "You're a _cape!"_ she blurted. "You're – you're _Shadow Stalker!"_

It was all so clear to her now. The school let Sophia get away with everything because she was a cape. Sophia could get into her locker because of her powers. But now the secret was out.

"You're Shadow Stalker," she repeated, anger and glee combining in her voice. "I _saw_ it. I've got you now, you fucking bitch. I've got you. You're fucking going _down."_

* * *

 **The Undersiders' Base**

* * *

"No!" Tattletale indeed knew exactly what he wanted from her. And it would not stop with what he wanted her to do first. He intended to dominate her as crudely and as totally as men have been dominating women since the dawn of time. His intent was to take her, to use her, to own her.

"Fuckin' _yes."_ His hand was on the back of her neck now, holding her in an inescapable grip. His power was twofold; he could grow or shrink any part of his body, within certain limits, and he could apply a surface-level force field that increased his strength. "Time I'm finished with you, you'll be begging for more."

Her hands scrabbled for anything she could use to escape this fate; half-hidden beneath a pizza box lid, she grasped the arrow she had pulled from Brian's chest. Without even stopping to think about the consequences of her actions, she stabbed it upward between his legs.

He screamed and let her go, grabbing for the injured location. Wrenching the arrow free, she stabbed him again, first in the left arm and then, as he bent over, in the eye. One of his arms caught her, sending her sprawling across the floor, head spinning. Regaining her wits, she pulled herself to her feet, to find him lurching toward her.

"You _bitch!"_ he bellowed. "I'll _kill_ you for that!"

Just as he reached up toward his face, she lunged forward; the heel of her hand slammed against the nock of the arrow, driving it all the way into his brain. He grabbed at her with his left hand and missed, blood spurting from between the fingers of his right hand as he tried to pull the arrow out.

And then, like a tree falling, he crashed to the floor. Blood ran from under his face to pool on the rug.

Pressed back against the wall, she panted, watching his twitching slowly subside. With her hand to her mouth, she bit on her knuckle, trying to stop herself from shaking. She wanted to cry; she wanted to throw up. Neither thing happened, but only due to the most stringent effort of will that she had ever enforced upon herself.

In the silence, a phone began to ring.

* * *

 **Empire Eighty-Eight Territory**

* * *

The taxi let Amy out at the correct address. She grabbed the change and jumped out of the vehicle, looking around for Vicky. A moment later, she spotted the familiar blonde hair of her sister, leaning out of an alley, just up the block. Amy hurried in that direction.

"Okay, what's the big rush?" she asked as she reached Vicky.

"There's a guy hurt," Vicky explained in a rush; Amy yelped involuntarily yelped as her sister scooped her up in her arms. "Come on, I think he's dying."

The sides of the alley flashed by, then Vicky was letting her down by the side of a man dressed in the typical garb of an Empire Eighty-Eight goon. He was certainly in a bad way; Amy could tell that without even touching him. She laid a hand on his bare arm, and shuddered.

"Spinal fractures, broken ribs, a badly fractured skull, severe brain damage … I'm not even sure how he's still alive," she reported. "What happened here?"

Vicky's eyes shifted sideways. "I was questioning him …" she began, then trailed off.

Amy could fill in the rest, especially given that there was a dumpster with a large dent in the side, lying upturned further down the alley. "For Christ's sake, Vicky," she chided her sister. "This is getting worse all the time. Ever since Dad died …"

"Yeah, yeah, okay, got it," Vicky interrupted. "But he'll be all right, yeah?"

Amy grimaced. "I dunno. The broken bones are easy. So's the skull fracture. But the brain damage – his brain was _deformed_ by the impact. Even if he survives, much less with his intellect intact, which would hugely surprise me, he'll never walk, talk or see ever again."

Vicky shook her head. "No. No no no. You've gotta fix him. You've gotta fix this."

"No, I don't." Amy stood up from the skinhead's side. "Vicky. This is vastly different from fixing a broken arm or even a ruptured spleen. Both of which you've caused before, because you're _not being careful enough._ This is the _brain._ I don't _do_ brains."

"But you _can,"_ argued Vicky. "Just this once, Ames. Come on. For me. You said you'd help."

Amy took a deep breath. "You never said that you'd caused massive brain trauma to some skinhead. You _know_ I don't do brains."

"Amy, if this guy dies, or ends up as a vegetable, do you have any idea how much trouble I'll be in?" pleaded Vicky. "Do you really want to do that to me? To Mom? To the _team?_ I'll be tried for negligence, or even manslaughter. And if they heard about the other times, it'd be even worse."

"Vicky." Amy shook her head. "I'm sorry. I can't keep doing this. _You_ need to learn self-control. Every time I bail you out like this, you don't learn anything."

It wasn't that she didn't _want_ to help Vicky. She knew full well that if she did this, she would get a flashing smile and a 'thank you!' then Vicky would go on her merry way. To do this all over again. To earn that smile and the gratitude that came with it was something that she liked. But she was beginning to learn that no matter how much she put herself forward, no matter how many times she saved Vicky from the consequences of her own actions, she wasn't actually going to get what she truly wanted from her sister. _I love her, but she just keeps using me._

"Amy, _please."_ Vicky stepped forward and embraced Amy, holding her close. Her aura flared, bombarding Amy's mind with impulses of warm feelings toward Vicky. It wasn't that she _needed_ them; she already had all the warm feelings that she would ever get in that regard. However, in combination with the close proximity, Vicky's body pressing on hers in all the right places, and even her scent, it all combined to form a single intoxicating wave of sensation. In addition, the embrace brought back involuntary memories of catching Vicky _in flagrante delicto_ with Dean, and how seeing the two of them had made her feel at the time.

All of the pain, the hurt, the loss and the anguish came together at once. Amy was adrift; nothing made sense. Her sister, the guiding light of her life, was begging her – _begging_ her – to break one of her most fundamental rules, and she was seriously beginning to consider doing just that.

"Anything you want me to do, just ask. I'll do it for you," Vicky pleaded urgently. "Any favour, any time. It's yours."

Amy couldn't hold out any longer. "Okay, I'll do it," she agreed. Dropping to one knee, she laid her hands on the Empire thug's head. He still lived, but was fading fast. She exerted her power; the man's skull reshaped, and the brain with it. Connections were re-established as she fixed the trauma, bringing his brain back to full functionality. From beginning to end, it took barely ten seconds. It was _easy._

Standing up once more, she faced her sister. "Done."

"What, really?"

As if in answer, the man groaned and stirred.

Vicky's eyes widened. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Again, she grabbed Amy in a ferocious hug. Again, her aura flared, even more strongly. And this time, the temptation was far too strong to resist. _She said she would do anything I wanted. I want … this._

And Amy kissed her.

* * *

 **Winslow High School**

* * *

"Yeah, right," scoffed Sophia. _"That's_ gonna fly. _Not."_

Taylor felt the power of the situation she was in. She could also feel a power of a different sort building in the back of her head, feeding on her anger, growing ever stronger. "So you're not gonna object if I march on down to Blackwell's office, tell her _you_ did this, and make her ring the PRT to tell them what you've been doing?"

"Like they'll listen to you," Emma stated flatly. "All _we_ gotta do is tell them it's all bullshit."

Almost, Taylor believed her. Almost. But there was the faintest edge of doubt in Emma's voice. Firmly, she reminded herself that she _knew_ this, that there was no way Sophia could make the _PRT_ shut up about this. "Let's go find out then," she declared. "It's not like I've got anything to _lose."_

She started for the door, but only made it three steps before Sophia tackled her from behind. They both slammed into the door; Sophia got the better of it, as she went to vapour just before impact. Taylor's glasses were jolted off again, skidding sideways into one of the stalls.

Dazed, Taylor tried to get up, but Sophia knocked her down again with one accurate punch to the face. The roaring in the back of her head was thunderous now; just as Sophia landed on her with both knees, she released it to do its worst.

Bugs poured into the bathrooms from every nook and cranny, every crevice. More flooded in through the open window. They swarmed around Emma and Madison, and attacked Sophia in force. Emma yanked the door open and fled; Madison tried to follow, but at that moment, Sophia slammed Taylor up against the door, blocking egress.

Sophia flickered to fog, then back to solid form, landing a punch that winded Taylor. Another flickering change, another blow. Taylor felt the world wavering around her.

 _Fuck. She's gonna kill me, and with these bugs, she's gonna call it self defence._

Another solid blow, one that rattled her teeth. The world went out of focus.

* * *

 **The Undersiders' Base**

* * *

Lisa realised that she was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, as the phone rang on. It wasn't her phone; that had a different ringtone. _It must be Hardcase's phone._

Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet. _Maybe I can explain what happened -_

Her own phone began to ring. She pulled it out and checked caller ID, although she knew who it was going to be. _Coil._

There was no way to explain this, she realised, that Coil would accept.

The phone rang on. As it did so, she headed into her room. _I have to go,_ she told herself. _I have to run. Get out of here._

Leaving the phone to ring – it would only serve to aid Coil in tracing her – she stuffed a backpack with her most essential items, and dashed out the door. Down the spiral staircase, moving as fast as she could. Just as she got to the entry door itself, she paused. Outside, she had just heard the sound of vehicular brakes, squeaking to a halt.

 _Fuck. He's_ _ **here.**_

There was a back door, she knew. She'd spent some time oiling the hinges and making sure the lock would open. She also had the only key to it. And she had never told _anyone_ about this bolt-hole.

As footsteps approached the main entry door, she dashed through the dimness, dodging around the derelict machinery. There was a creak as the door opened, light splashing through the interior of the building. But she was already behind cover.

The tall skinny silhouette who entered could only have been Coil. Had she her pistol, she may have chanced picking him off. Or perhaps not; the man had a talent for turning bad situations to his advantage.

As he mounted the staircase, she took the chance to sidle the rest of the way, to the carefully-maintained rear exit. He reached the top. She slid the key into the lock. Carefully, slowly, she turned it; the click was muted. There were just seconds left before he discovered the body; opening the door, she slipped out.

The back alley was deserted; she set off at a steady trot, her pack bouncing on her back. Ahead of her stretched an uncertain future. Her only chance of survival involved getting as far away from Coil as possible, and _staying_ there.

* * *

 **Empire Eighty-Eight Territory**

* * *

Vicky's eyes opened wide as Amy's lips melded with hers, but it was far too late. Too late for both Amy and Vicky. Amy had lived with her frustrated desires for far too long; the recent emotional upheavals had only served to sharpen her wants and needs. So even if she had been inclined to moderate her approach at the beginning, her own hormone-driven urges would not have allowed her to do so.

Too late also for Vicky; when she realised what Amy was doing, she tried to protest, to pull away. But Amy, although unable to physically enforce her will on Vicky in this matter, still had resources to draw on. It was ironic that Vicky had just persuaded Amy to use her power on someone's brain for the very first time just moments before; had she not done so, what happened next may have been avoided.

Amy felt the stirrings of denial in Vicky's brain long before, neurologically speaking, her sister began to try to push her away. But her frustrated desires would not accept 'no' for an answer; all she knew was that she wanted what she wanted, and she wanted it _now._ So when Vicky tried to push her away, Amy's power _excised_ that part of Vicky's mind that had originated the order.

It must be noted that Amy knew nothing of this. All she knew was that Vicky's initial resistance quickly faded, replaced by compliance. She kissed Vicky, and was kissed in return.

It was only when Amy reluctantly separated from Vicky, her mind clearing, that she realised what she had done. Albeit unwittingly, she had rewritten Vicky's brain, removing those parts of her personality which had objected to the forced kiss. All that was left was a shell of a human being, one whose entire being revolved around pleasing Amy. Nothing else remained.

"Oh, god," she whimpered. "Oh, god. Vicky. Please. No."

"What's the matter, Amy?" Vicky's voice was simpler, childlike. "Are you all right?"

"Vicky." Tears flooded Amy's eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please, let me make it right."

"Of course you can make it right, Amy." Vicky smiled at her, a bright and happy smile. "You can do anything."

Neither of them took notice of the Empire skinhead stumbling to his feet and fleeing. He wasn't important any more.

Amy put her hands to Vicky's head and concentrated. In every other case of brain damage and amnesia she had ever encountered, the lost information had been _somewhere._ Even if she didn't deal with brains, she could still see how to fix them.

But in this case, the information truly was gone. Much of Vicky's personality had been erased, as if it had never been. She was, in many ways, a _tabula rasa._

Amy had done this. She had done this because she had desired Vicky. Most of all, she had done this because she had broken her cardinal rule. _I don't touch brains._ Looking at the wreckage of her sister, at the bright and empty smile, she felt her world crumbling around her. Her gorge rose. _I did this. Me._

Right at that moment, had a blade been handy, she would have slit her own wrists with a smile.

She shook her head. _No. I can't think that way. Vicky needs me._ There was vanishingly little self-motivation within that which had been Vicky. If Amy died – _or if I give myself up to be Birdcaged –_ there was every chance that Vicky would sit and stare at the wall until she died of thirst or hunger.

 _There's only one thing I can do._

"Vicky," she stated firmly. "We're leaving."

"Are we going home?"

"No. We're not going home. We're just going … away for a while. On a holiday."

"I like holidays."

"I know." She would never be able to go home, to face Carol, ever again. Not until she had figured out how to rebuild Vicky's personality from the wreckage into which she had rendered it. However long it took. However stringent the cost was on herself.

 _I swear to you, Vicky, I will do this. No matter what it takes. You_ _ **will**_ _be yourself again. Even if you hate me for the rest of your life for what I have done to you._

She reached for Vicky's hand. "Come on, let's go."

Trustingly, Vicky allowed her to take it. "Okay."

Together, they walked off down the alleyway.

* * *

 **Winslow High School**

* * *

Sophia was choking her. Taylor was on her knees, fighting to drag the stronger girl's hands from her throat, but to no avail. She only had the vaguest of control over the bugs she had apparently summoned, and not enough were attacking Sophia in ways that would make her let Taylor go.

And then something was pushed into her right hand. Taylor's fading eyesight could not make it out, but the bugs that landed on it gave her the shape. A blade. A knife.

Where it had come from, she didn't know. But right then, she didn't care. Convulsively, she brought the knife up between them, sinking the razor-sharp blade up and under Sophia's ribcage. Sophia's eyes opened wide before she puffed into shadow form, reforming a couple of yards away. A bloodstain appeared across the front of Sophia's top, spreading as if by magic. She pressed her hand to it, then went from her feet to her knees. Bending forward, she coughed; blood sprayed from her lips. She went to shadow form once more, vanishing through the door.

Taylor looked at the knife in her hand. It had a swastika emblazoned on the top of the handle. Convulsively, she let it fall; it clattered to the tiles of the bathroom. Painfully, she climbed to her feet. As she approached Madison, the bugs covering the petite girl swarmed aside. More climbed from her open mouth. Her open eyes had been partially eaten away.

Abruptly, Taylor turned aside and vomited into one of the sinks. She washed her mouth out, washed the clinging muck from her face. With both hands on the sink, she stared into her reflection. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face bruised. But she had more life in her eyes than she'd had over the last six months.

"Well, fuck," she muttered. "I need to get out of here. But where are my glasses?"

With a start, she realised that she was holding them in her right hand. Carefully, she put them on; the world came back into focus. Pulling the bathroom door open, she peered outside. Sophia was lying at the top of the steps, face down.

 _Okay,_ she told herself. _Okay. Okay. Okay. I've just stabbed a Ward to death. Killed a civilian with bug powers which I didn't know I had. They Birdcage people for less._

"Fuck." Her voice was raspy. "I have to get out of here. I have to get away."

As quickly and quietly as she knew how, she descended the stairs and headed for the nearest fire door. Pushing it open, she stepped into the midday sun.

She didn't know where she was going, or what she was going to do when she got there.

All she knew was that there was no going back.

* * *

 **An Abandoned Building in the Docks**

* * *

Lisa finally managed to work the board away from where it had been nailed over the empty window frame, and climbed through. She pulled it back into place just far enough that it would look undisturbed. _Coil will have frozen my accounts. I'm gonna have to start hustling for more cash tomorrow. In the meantime, I've got cans and bottled water._ She'd settled for less, in the past.

A small spirit stove provided both light and heat; she tipped the contents of a can into a small bowl and began to heat it.

A noise outside made her look around; silently, she turned the stove down and put a cover on the bowl. Fully aware that the cooking smell would have permeated outside, she silently got to her feet and prowled over to the side of the window. In her hand was a short piece of rebar; anyone coming after her was going to get a nasty surprise.

To her own surprise, the fingers that hooked under the loose board were those of what she judged to be a teenage girl. A few bugs buzzed around her, landing on her upraised arms. The hands stopped pulling on the board.

"May – may I come in, please?" The voice was female, about Lisa's own age. "I won't hurt you. I promise. I just need somewhere to sleep."

Sincerity rang in every syllable. More, there was deep hurt there. Whoever this girl was, she had been carrying pain for a very long time.

Lisa sighed. "Come on in." She helped the girl pull away the board, then gave her a hand to climb in. While taller than Lisa, the newcomer was very skinny. Her clothing and hair were also caked with something horrid. "I'm Lisa. You?"

"Taylor." She seemed to be about to say something more, but then her head came up. "Someone's out there."

Lisa looked around, just as the door, which had been nailed into the doorframe, came loose with a piercing shriek. "Shit. Get ready to run."

A frizzy-haired girl stumbled into the room. "I smell food. Is that food? Oh, god. I am _so_ hungry." Following her was a tall blonde teenager, wearing a very readily identifiable costume.

Lisa stared, her eyes going wide. "Holy shit. Panacea and Glory Girl."

Taylor's reaction was terror; she jerked as if to flee, then slumped. Slowly, she raised her hands. "I can't run any more. I give up."

"No, wait." Lisa put her hand on Taylor's shoulder. "They're not here to arrest you."

"We're not here to arrest anyone." Panacea's face had lines in it that no teenager should. "We just want shelter for the night. And a little of that food, if you can spare it." She turned to the blonde. "Are you hungry, Vicky?"

Glory Girl nodded. "I am hungry, Amy."

Lisa blinked rapidly as her power connected the dots. "Well, holy shit."

Taylor was slower on the uptake. This was not surprising; nearly everyone was slower on the uptake than Lisa. "What?"

Lisa nodded to the other two girls. "They're on the run, too. For something that Amy did to Glory Girl."

"I'm going to fix it." Amy's voice was strained almost to the breaking point. "I _have_ to."

"I can never fix what I did." Taylor's voice was dull.

"Depends." Lisa eyed her shrewdly. "What did you do that was so bad?"

Taylor's eyes dropped to the floor. "I killed Shadow Stalker."

"You did what." Lisa spoke at the same time as Panacea, although her tone was somewhat different.

"She was choking me to death, and I had a knife. So I stabbed her." Taylor's voice was almost inaudible at the end.

"That's self-defence." Amy's voice was firm. "You could have turned yourself in. Gotten a fair hearing."

Taylor shook her head. "No. I couldn't."

"And anyway, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bitch." Lisa smiled at Taylor. "Thanks. You just saved me the trouble of tracking her down and killing her myself."

Taylor looked confused. "What? Why?"

"Because she murdered Grue, right in front of my eyes."

Panacea frowned. "She _murdered_ someone?"

"Sure as hell," Lisa confirmed. "Shot a crossbow arrow right into the middle of his chest. Then she made it look like an Empire Eighty-Eight kill. He was black, you see."

It was Panacea's turn for her eyes to open wide. "Vicky."

"Yes, Amy?"

"Which murder were you investigating?"

"Brian Laborn," Vicky replied at once. "Murdered by the Empire Eighty-Eight. Sharpened broomstick rammed into his chest." She went back to staring at the wall.

Lisa nodded. "That was his name. Brian."

Amy ran her hand over her forehead. "Vicky told me that she ran into Shadow Stalker, who told her that the Empire was responsible."

Lisa snorted. "Like hell. She was just covering up her crime."

Taylor's head came up. "So … she was a _murderer?"_

"Several times over, if I had to guess," Lisa agreed. "But we'll never be able to prove it."

"Oh." Taylor slumped again.

"But that's okay." Lisa shrugged. "You can hang with me for a while, if you want. Until you figure out what you want to do."

Taylor nodded. "Thanks."

"Uh …" That was Panacea.

Lisa looked that way. "Yeah?"

"Can we … can we hang with you a while, too?"

It had been a while since Lisa had been able to smile, but now she did. "Sure. The more the merrier."

* * *

End of Part Two


	3. Chapter 3

**One Bad Day**

* * *

Part Three: Opposite and Unequal Reaction

* * *

 _[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

* * *

 **Wednesday Afternoon, December 22, 2010  
Sarah Pelham**

* * *

"Here you go, honey." Neil's rumbling voice brought Sarah out of an uneasy doze. At the same time, the delicious scent of chamomile tea drifted across her nostrils, giving her the impetus to open her eyes. Reaching up, she accepted the cup from him and sipped at it, enjoying the flavour as it spread through her mouth.

"Thanks," she sighed. "This is just what I needed." A moment later, she frowned. "Did I ask you to make this? Because I don't remember doing that." She took another sip anyway, feeling the tension easing from her body. As tough as things were out there on the streets, having Neil to support and care for her made all the difference.

"Nope." He settled on to the sofa beside her, one arm automatically going around behind her neck. Just as automatically, she snuggled into the embrace, making a small contented sound in the back of her throat. "But you looked beat, and I know you like it." Leaning over, he planted a kiss on the top of her head. "You're pushing yourself too hard, honey."

"Holiday madness." It was a common phrase among capes and cops alike. Just as normal crime spiked around Christmas and Easter, so did the incidence of offences either perpetrated _by_ parahumans or _to_ parahumans; quite often, both at the same time. Along with the rest of New Wave, Sarah had been doing her best to help keep the insanity down to a manageable level. She wasn't at all sure they were succeeding. "I mean, the Empire's not just roughing people up these days; they're murdering them. From what Vicky told me, they're even marking their kills. That's a shift toward the disturbing."

Neil grimaced. "I heard. I just hope—"

What he hoped went by the wayside as the landline rang at Sarah's elbow. Plucking the cordless phone off its cradle, she checked the caller ID as she hit the answer button. "Hi, Carol. What's up?"

" _Are Vicky and Amy at your house?"_ asked Carol without preamble. _"Because they never came home from school. When I called Arcadia, I was informed that Vicky had cut class after first period, and Amy never attended any classes after lunch. If they're there, send them home at once. I have serious words for them."_ Her tone was tight and controlled, but Sarah could hear a certain amount of suppressed tension under it. Carol had already lost Mark, and quite understandably didn't like not having her girls where she could see them. If Sarah lost Neil, she knew damn well she'd become a lot more protective of Eric and Crystal, and rightfully so.

"Uh, I haven't seen them, but Neil might know where they are," Sarah said, then turned to her husband. Putting the phone to her chest to cover the microphone, she asked, "Have you seen Amy or Vicky? Carol says they never came home."

He frowned. "Uh, no. Are they out with Eric and Crystal?" His expression became a lot more concerned when she shook her head. "Crap. Are they home?" By 'they', she knew he meant their own two children. She nodded. "Okay, I'll go ask them if they know." With a sigh, he took his arm away from her shoulders, then stood. "Tell her … tell her not to worry. Vicky's as tough as they come, and nobody in their right mind would hurt Amy."

 _Yeah, but there's any number of people in the city who_ _ **aren't**_ _in their right minds._ Sarah took a deep breath and lifted the phone to her ear again. "Neil hasn't seen them either, but he's just gone to ask Eric and Crystal if they know. Have you tried their phones?" She knew quite well that both the Dallon girls—as well as Carol herself, and Sarah and her family—carried cell-phones as a matter of course.

" _ **Yes,**_ _I tried their phones."_ Sarah winced as the unspoken phrase 'you idiot' came across quite clearly. _"They're either out of battery, out of range of towers, or switched off."_ Which was all the more concerning, as the first two were quite difficult to achieve; as a favour to Carol, Armsmaster had worked on the phones and made them much more efficient, both in reception range and in battery life.

"There's probably nothing to worry about," she said soothingly, casting about in her mind for a reasonable explanation. "They've probably just gone to the movies or something. I haven't heard of any major action by any of the gangs today; have you?"

" _Well, no,"_ Carol replied, sounding slightly less tense. _"Though they should know better than that by now. I've told them and told them. One of them always has to have her phone on, even if it's just on silent, for situations exactly like this."_

"Teenagers will teenage," Sarah said soothingly. "They're probably off somewhere having fun. You can yell at them when they get back, you'll feel better, they'll be typically resentful, and everything will be back to normal." She looked around as familiar steps descended the stairs. "Here's Neil now. Let's see what's going on."

The look on his face gave her pause. "I'm not sure what's going on," he said slowly, obviously having caught the tail-end of what she was saying. "There's been something going on on the PHO boards for the last quarter-hour. Eric's trying to catch up with it now, but the mods have locked three threads so far and issued a record number of temp bans on top of that." He shook his head. "It all started with a comment from some Empire guy who says Vicky nearly killed him."

" _What? What's going on? What's that about Vicky?"_ Carol sounded more anxious than ever. _"Put me on speaker!"_

Sarah pressed the appropriate button and held the phone up between herself and Neil. "He says there's something going on with the PHO boards, and some Empire guy claims Vicky nearly killed him."

Neil opened his mouth to speak, but Carol got in first. _"Ridiculous! I want to see his injuries! If he can post to PHO, he can't be that badly hurt."_

Sarah didn't voice the obvious. If Vicky had called Amy to leave school and heal the guy, it would make sense. For a certain definition of 'sense', that is. And she _had_ noticed Vicky was letting loose a little more frequently of late.

"No, that's not the thing they're locking threads over," Neil stated carefully. "Carol, I need to ask you something. Are Amy and Vicky an item? Because this guy says that before he ran off, Panacea and Glory Girl were kissing each other like there was no tomorrow."

Sarah's train of thought locked up on all brakes and derailed; there were no survivors. She stared at Neil. "Please tell me you're kidding." His expression, as he stared back at her, was not his 'gotcha' face. It was his 'I have no idea what to do next' face.

" _No."_ Carol sounded like she was hanging on to her last shred of normalcy for dear life. _"I refuse to believe that. Vicky is seeing Dean Stansfield. I have no idea which way Amy swings, but Vicky is straight; I'd bet my life on it."_

"And even if they have just now decided they're in love, why would they have gone dark?" Sarah interjected. "They're not related, after all. It'll blow over." But even as she said the words, she knew she was wrong. She shuddered at the thought of the shitstorm that had to be tearing apart PHO, especially given that Amy's adopted status wasn't well known. Some people would even be deliberately ignoring it for the sake of pushing the controversy even harder. The chance to smear New Wave with a a teenage lesbian incest scandal would be too tempting for certain interests to pass up.

There was a beep, and Sarah checked the phone. Another call was incoming; caller ID had it as the news desk of the Brockton Bay Bulletin. "Uh, I've got a call incoming from the newspapers."

" _I've got three,"_ Carol snapped. _"Don't answer them, or if you do, don't give any substantial replies. Everything's fine in the team, no comment. Especially not to the tabloids."_

"Got it," Sarah agreed. "I'll let you know if we hear from the girls before you do. Talk to you later." She ended the call, then took a deep breath before she pressed the button to answer the incoming call. _No comment. Everything is fine._

* * *

 **Carol**

* * *

"So you're aware that this supposed witness is not only hiding behind the anonymity of the internet, but he's also a self-described member of a criminal-led gang, correct? Not necessarily the most unbiased of people when it comes to making claims about a superhero team. Think about that for just a moment." Carol deliberately paused to give the reporter on the other end of the line time to try to regain some ground.

" _But there's still the claim he made …"_

"Yes, the claim," she said flatly. "Let's talk about that for a second. Let's suppose just for a second that it's not a total fabrication to smear the good name of New Wave. Which, by the way, the Empire would just _love._ Let's say it was true. Glory Girl and Panacea are both sixteen, and Panacea is _adopted._ They've also grown up with each other. So even if it _wasn't_ a simple affectionate kiss—which sisters the world over will give one another—there'd still be nothing illicit or illegal about it. For the record, I don't believe for a moment that it _is_ true, and if you print anything to the contrary _without absolute proof_ , you'll be knowingly assisting a bunch of _supervillains_ in weakening public support for one of the few superhero teams that practises true public accountability. Do you really want that?"

There really was only one answer that he could give. _"Well, no, but …"_

"... but if you really want to go farther with this, I suggest the following course of action," Carol talked over the top of him. "Find this so-called witness and publish _his_ name and address. I fully intend to sue him for defamation of character, on behalf of Glory Girl and Panacea. If he can't be found, or if he's not willing to face me in court, what does that tell you about his spurious claim?"

A few moments later, she ended the call. Then she threw the phone across the room, bouncing it off of an armchair, which absorbed the force of the impact. She couldn't have gotten away with talking to _no_ reporters; the news crews would start making up their own news at that point. But talking to one reporter from the relatively staid Brockton Bay Chronicle meant that everyone else would swarm around that publication and steal snippets for their own papers. Or at least, that was the plan.

Getting up, she went into the kitchen and took a bottle out of the liquor cabinet. It was a prime aged whiskey she'd gotten Mark for Christmas; the night after his funeral, she'd had one glass from it, in private, and cried herself to sleep. Now, she unscrewed the top and poured herself a glass. She wasn't a drinker by habit but the alcohol slid down her throat with ease, burning pleasantly as it went. It didn't do much to put distance between her and the rest of the world, so she poured another one.

That one went down easily, too.

* * *

 **PRT Building  
Director Emily Piggot**

* * *

 _I need a drink._

It was a thought Emily had had more than once during her tenure as regional Director of PRT ENE. Fortunately for her ruined kidneys, these days it was less of a direct urge and more of a lingering wish. That didn't prevent it from recurring at times like this, when it seemed all the troubles of the world seemed intent on landing on the back of her neck, all at once. For all that Brockton Bay was in the top ten cities in the continental US for cape presence (with a correspondingly high proportion of criminal capes) she'd never had a Ward murdered on her watch before.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out again, she looked up at Armsmaster as he stood on the far side of her desk. "So you've got a witness and a name?" It was heartening that they had so much already. Of course, she would much prefer not have had one of her Wards murdered at all, but the universe was rather good at not letting her have what she wanted. With any luck, if they got this solved fast enough, the Youth Guard might not even get involved at all.

"And a timeline," he confirmed. Taking a miniaturised projector from his belt, he slotted a chip into it and placed it on her desk. "I carried out the interview myself." He stepped back out of the way of the projection as the device came to life, throwing a still picture up on the blank wall of her office. A time/date stamp was visible at the top left corner of the image.

As with all of his inventions, the picture and sound were very impressive for something so small.

The girl on the screen was sixteen or seventeen, with well-styled red hair and definitely above-average looks, for all that she looked like she'd recently been crying. Flanking her as she sat at the table was an older man, also with fading red hair. The familial resemblance was easy to see, but that wasn't what caught Emily's eye. "I know that man," she said suddenly. "I've seen his face before."

"Yes," Armsmaster agreed. "He provided a character witness for Stalker when she was inducted into the Wards. He and his daughter are on record as being in the know about her secret identity, from before she joined the Wards. Playing back the footage now."

The picture jerked into life, as Armsmaster's voice spoke over the top. _"This is Armsmaster, conducting preliminary witness interview regarding the murder of Shadow Stalker, on December twenty-second of two thousand ten. Please identify yourselves for the record."_

The bulky older man raised his head slightly. In a practised tone, he spoke clearly and firmly. _"My name is Alan Barnes. This is my daughter Emma."_

There was a moment's pause, then he visibly nudged the girl—Emma—with his elbow. With a start, she spoke up. _"Uh, sorry. I thought Dad—uh, my name is Emma Barnes. I'm a student here at Winslow."_

" _That's all right, Emma."_ As far as Emily could tell, Armsmaster was working on his people skills. He still wasn't exactly good at it, but at least he was making the effort. _"I understand that you're acquainted with the alleged assailant?"_

" _Yeah."_ Emma tightened her jaw and looked directly at the camera. At the same time, her hand took hold of her father's, and held it tightly. _"We used to be best friends, you know? Back in elementary and middle school. But when we came to Winslow, I made new friends and she never really got over that."_ There was another nudge from her father's elbow. _"What? Oh, yeah. Her name's Taylor Hebert. That's H-E-B-E-R-T. Anyway, she went from being a nice kid, bit quiet, to being one of those weird loner psychos. The type you expect to bring a gun to school or something."_

Emily frowned. The girl's delivery was … if anything, a little too polished. Almost as if she'd rehearsed saying her lines. "Pause it," she said, and the picture froze. "Does the Barnes girl have acting experience?"

"She's modelled teenagers' lines for local stores," Armsmaster responded. "Is that what you mean?"

Leaning back in her chair, Emily nodded slowly. "Yes, that sounds about right. Keep it going."

The footage rolled on as Armsmaster's voice came over the top again. _"Are you aware of the nature of the wounds we found on Shadow Stalker?"_

Emma looked a little puzzled. _"I heard she got stabbed. Is that what you mean?"_

For the first time, the alignment of the image altered, swaying a little from side to side. Emily guessed that Armsmaster had shaken his head. _"Part of the wounding involved a swastika. Was Taylor involved with the Empire in any way?"_

That, Emily saw, brought the girl up short. _"Uh, not that I know of. But I didn't know everything she did. I knew she didn't like Sophia, but I thought it was because, well, because she was my friend."_ She seemed to think about her next words. _"If she was connected to the Empire, she wasn't big with them. Maybe she was trying to get in by doing that?"_

"Pause." Emily waited till the image froze again. "Do you have any evidence that the Hebert girl has Empire ties of any kind?"

"Nothing direct," he admitted. "But the way Stalker was killed was positively _brutal._ She was stabbed in the chest, puncturing her lung, then three more times in the back while she was trying to get away, then her head was pulled back by the hair and her throat was slashed. _Then_ someone carved a swastika across her back. There's a lot of hatred there. A lot of anger."

Lips pursed, Emily nodded. She'd seen the aftermath of gang slayings before, especially ones motivated by racial tensions. They could get ugly. "Have the forensics people located the knife yet? Prints would be very useful around now. Also, is there any indication that her parents or siblings have Empire ties?"

"She's an only child, and her mother's dead," Armsmaster reported crisply. "The father's actually head of hiring for the Dockworkers Association. No known gang ties, but we're still looking into that. And no, they haven't located the knife. Best approximation is that it's a double-edged leaf-shaped blade about six inches in length. The Empire uses several types of blade that follow this model. Preliminary forensics say that it was either the same knife that did all the wounds, or virtually identical ones."

"Her mother's dead?" Emily's interest was sharpened. "Any chance it's what pushed her into the Empire?" It was entirely possible; the ABB was aggressive enough from time to time to murder people, and of the other two gangs actively recruiting in Winslow, the Merchants were hardly viable to be called a gang. Moreover, their ethos was more about selling drugs and shooting up than taking revenge for a dead mother.

Armsmaster shook his head. When he spoke, his tone was regretful. "Probably not. She was killed a couple of years ago in a single-vehicle accident. The police report stated that she was probably texting and driving. She didn't have anything in her background that might link her to the Empire, though there was an arrest back in her college days that links her to Lustrum's movement."

Emily frowned. A decades-old link to a now-Birdcaged cape with fanatical feminist tendencies didn't offer much of a reason to join a neo-Nazi organisation in the present day. Unless, of course, the tendency to join extremist groups was somehow genetic in nature. There was almost certainly a study about it somewhere. Certain modes of thought, she surmised, might actually make it more likely to join such groups, and such things _did_ run in families …

That was something to consider later, she decided. "So noted. Continue the playback."

 _"That's something that has yet to be determined,"_ Armsmaster's voice stated. _"Please walk me through what happened. When did it start?"_

On the makeshift screen, Emma took a deep breath, then licked her lips. _"After third period. Sophia and I met up with Madison outside Mr Gladly's classroom to go to lunch together, but Mads said she needed to go to the bathroom. So we went to the third floor one and waited-"_

 _"I'm sorry to interrupt, but why did you go up there?"_ Armsmaster broke in with the question. _"Aren't there bathrooms on lower floors?"_

 _"Yeah, but most everyone wants to go to the bathroom at the beginning of lunch break,"_ Emma replied. _"We—I mean she—didn't want to have to wait too long."_

Emily filed away the slip of the tongue—if it even was one—without comment. It wasn't something she could really call out, and in any case there was something else that had caught her attention.

 _"So what happened then?" prompted Armsmaster's voice._

 _"Sophia and me didn't need to go, so we waited outside the bathroom while Madison went in. The next thing, we heard her scream, so we ran in. Taylor was just standing there with a kind of sick grin on her face, and Madison was screaming and thrashing around. She was covered in bugs. When Soph and I burst in, a few came for us, but not as many as there were on poor Mads."_ Emma clutched her father's hand convulsively. _"It was_ _ **horrible**_ _."_ Turning to her father, she buried her face in his shoulder. He wrapped his free arm around her and held her tightly.

Armsmaster paused the playback. "We pulled up the interview for a few moments until she regained her composure," he explained. "It seemed to have affected her badly."

"I'm not surprised," Emily said dryly. "Though there are a few things that don't seem to be adding up. It _could_ be her memory playing tricks on her, but I'm a little dubious about them."

When Armsmaster spoke next, he sounded puzzled. "I'm not sure what you're talking about. I mean, there are some things about this case that don't make sense to _me,_ but not in that part of the interview."

"I'm going to assume that you know very little about teenage girls." There was no change in Armsmaster's visible expression, but Emily almost smiled at the air of confusion radiating off the man. "There is no way two would wait outside while one went in. Was there a mirror in there?"

"Well, yes, but I don't see the connection." Thus spoke, Emily mused, a man who'd never had to share a bathroom with a teenage girl. Or, for that matter, a woman of virtually any age.

"Run it back a little." She waited till he complied, then pointed. "See? You can see she's been crying, but her makeup is perfect. I'm willing to bet that during the break before you resumed, she went to the bathroom and fixed it all up again."

"So you're saying she would've gone in with Madison. Both of them would have." Armsmaster finally seemed to be getting it.

"Exactly." Again, Emily indicated the face of Emma Barnes, frozen in mid-word. "I'm not saying _all_ teenage girls are so image-conscious but with her looks and her background in modelling, it'd be basically impossible for her not to be. Her not going in there with Madison, especially just before she goes to lunch with all the other students, is within the realms of possibility, but extremely unlikely. So there's that. Also, something else."

"Something else?" Armsmaster's tone seemed to be asking another question: _what else did I miss?_

"She said the Hebert girl already had her bug powers; specifically, she was attacking Madison with them when they entered." Emily waited for him to get the inference.

"You're saying that because she may have lied with one part of her statement, she lied about that too?" Armsmaster sounded dubious. "You realise, that doesn't necessarily follow."

"No, you're right. It doesn't." Emily heard the satisfaction in her own voice. "But we have the swastika carving, which indicates Empire involvement. The thing is, if she wanted to get into the Empire and she had bug powers, all she'd have to do is present herself complete with powers, and they'd welcome her with open arms. So if she had the bug powers before today … _why hasn't this already happened?"_

Armsmaster nodded slowly. "So either she hasn't had the bug powers for that long, or someone else carved the swastika. And presumably finished off Shadow Stalker." His lips compressed as he presumably frowned. "I _had_ been wondering how a brand-new cape with no formal training that we know of managed to beat Stalker so comprehensively."

"Exactly." In a fight between Shadow Stalker and a bug controller, even one armed with a knife, she would've bet on the Ward. As much as Emily had disliked the volatile teenager, she was aware that Shadow Stalker had pursued a middling-successful career as a vigilante for some months before being snared by the PRT for her lack of care and attention. "Do you think the Hebert girl had help from the Empire? Or perhaps other powers that Trumped Stalker's?" It was the only thing that made sense, really. "Or even both?"

"Too many anomalous data points to reach any firm conclusions at this time," decided Armsmaster. "There's a little bit more to go with the interview."

"Show me," Emily ordered, settling back into her seat. Belatedly, it occurred to her that the swastika carving may have been carried out to _frame_ the Empire for the killing. She made a mental note to look into that possibility as well. _Too many variables._

The footage skipped ahead, showing Emma back in control of her emotions. As Emily had predicted, her makeup was perfect once more.

 _"So you entered the bathroom,"_ Armsmaster said. _"What happened then?"_

On screen, Emma licked her lips again. Emily wondered if it was some kind of tell. _"I—I wanted to save Madison, but Soph just grabbed me and shoved me out the door. She told me to go, that she'd hold Taylor off."_ She sniffled and dabbed at the corner of her eye, though Emily was fairly certain there hadn't been any tears there. _"It was the most heroic thing I've ever seen."_

Already inclined to be dubious, Emily decided to take the dramatics with a large grain of salt. Given that Emma was alive and Sophia was dead, she was willing to accept that Emma left while Sophia stayed. _How_ it had come about was something she did not intend to blindly accept from Emma's testimony.

 _"What did you do?"_ Armsmaster's voice was non-judgmental.

 _"I ran downstairs,"_ Emma supplied. _"Went straight to Principal Blackwell's office and raised the alarm."_ She paused. _"Oh, and I think I saw the knife, too. Just as I went out the door, I looked back and I thought I saw something in Taylor's hand. Something shiny."_

 _"Can you describe it for me?"_ asked Armsmaster, an increase of interest now evident in his tone. _"How long was the blade? How was it shaped? Were there any distinguishing markings on it? Any details at all would be very helpful."_

The teenage girl hesitated, and Emily made a private bet with herself that no pertinent details would be forthcoming. _"I—I didn't see very much,"_ she confessed. _"Just a glint, you know? I didn't even realise what it was until I heard that Sophia had been stabbed. Then I knew what it must've been. I think she must've brought the knife to school on purpose. To kill me, or Sophia, or Madison. Or all three of us."_

Emily held up her hand, and Armsmaster paused the footage once more. "She never saw the knife," she said flatly. "I would bet a large amount of money that Taylor wasn't holding it when Emma went out the door."

"I'm forced to agree." He sounded a little hurt; she suspected he'd been feeling a certain degree of sympathy toward the redheaded girl. Which, of course, had been Emma's aim all along. The teen was really good at presenting herself as an innocent victim. "But why play that up?"

"To fix in our minds that Taylor had a weapon on her from the beginning, and ignore the fact that she had bug powers." She rubbed her chin. "How many capes with a reliable ranged power also pick up a weapon like a knife to augment that? I'm not being rhetorical here; I really don't know. It just seems to me if you can swarm someone to death with bugs, being able to stab them is a little superfluous."

"Not many that I know of. Still, Stalker _was_ stabbed," he pointed out. "There was a patch of aspirated blood in the middle of the floor that I'm willing to bet she coughed up once she was wounded. And as I said earlier, if our forensics techs are correct, all the wounds were done with either the same weapon or blades that were virtually identical to one another. But if we can't actually put the knife in Taylor's hand, did she even do it? Or did someone else come in and take over? Someone connected to the Empire?"

"Maybe we don't even need the Empire connection," Emily said, recalling her earlier thought. "What if whoever killed her did it for their own reasons, and only carved the swastika to throw investigators off the scent?" Which, if she thought about it, made Taylor a possible suspect once more. She wasn't sure _why_ the girl would've stabbed Stalker, or even how Taylor could have overcome her in a straight fight, but reading between the lines of Emma's description of her, she got the strong indication that Emma disliked Taylor Hebert intensely. _Is that why she was in that bathroom?_

"But it's got similarities to a murder that happened a few weeks ago," Armsmaster said. "We found Grue of the Undersiders, a young black man, stabbed to death with a broken-off broomstick. They carved a swastika on him as well. The Empire denied responsibility, but Shadow Stalker's report clearly put them on the scene at the time …" His voice trailed off. "That's a really odd coincidence. Two murders, two swastikas when they've never made a practice of doing that before, and Stalker just happens to be involved in both of them."

"She's the _victim_ in this case, don't forget," Emily said flatly. "But I agree; it _is_ odd. If the same people did both, or even if this one's a copycat, it follows that Stalker's killer almost has to be Empire. Maybe they figured out who she was and thought she could identify them, so they came to Winslow to shut her up?"

"Doesn't hold water," Armsmaster replied. "That was nearly three weeks ago. They'd assume they're free and clear by now."

"Unless they're Winslow students, new in the Empire and cocky with it." Emily was having a hard time getting over the double coincidence. "Suppose they came up to the third floor to do whatever; steal from the classrooms, have a smoke somewhere, settle a gang difference. Stalker's been stabbed. She's coughing up blood, so she ghosts out through the wall or door, and they see this. They recognise her as Shadow Stalker and that she's wounded, so they go in for the kill, and mark her the same way they did the other guy. Once the deed's done, they scatter."

Armsmaster paused. "That's a really, really big coincidence," he objected, but she heard the doubt in his voice. "There's still the problem with the knife wounds all being from the same blade. Forensics has a blood-mark inside the bathroom that's consistent with a knife being dropped on the floor."

"From the same _type_ of blade," Emily pointed out. "And what about this; Taylor has the knife and stabs Stalker somehow. Stalker backs off and coughs blood. Taylor drops the knife for whatever reason. Stalker's able to pick up weapons on the way through while she's ghosted; I've read her reports. She does this and ends up outside the bathroom with a bloody knife, but the wound and the passage through the wall weakens her so when the Empire recruits see her, they overpower her, take the knife off her and kill her with it."

"Which _would_ solve the mystery of where the knife went to," Armsmaster conceded. "We've searched every trashcan and dumpster in and around Winslow. There was actually an amazing amount of contraband there, including several knives that fit the type of the one that killed Stalker, but none with any traces of fresh blood on them."

"We'll go with that for a working theory," Emily decided. "Let's see what the rest of the interview has to offer."

The action started again. _"What did Principal Blackwell do?"_ asked Armsmaster's voice.

" _She set off the fire alarm and put the school on lockdown,"_ Emma said promptly. _"Standard procedure for cape attack. Then she called the police and the PRT and sent me to the school nurse to make sure I was OK. I had a few bug bites, but that was all."_ Her shiver looked entirely unfeigned. _"Seeing all those bugs swarming over poor Madison like that …"_

" _Can you recall any more details of your encounter with Miss Hebert?"_ Armsmaster prompted. Emma shook her head. _"All right, then. Thank you for your assistance. You've been very brave."_ A card skated into view across the table; Emily knew for a fact that Armsmaster had a dispenser in the cuff of one of his gauntlets. _"Call me at any time of night or day if you think of anything else."_

The picture cut off there, and the projector shut down. Armsmaster stowed the device on his belt once more. "After that, I escorted them to their vehicle and went back to see how the forensics techs were doing with the crime scene."

"Anything of note there?" Emily began going over in her mind what she was due to do once Armsmaster left. There was paperwork from Requisitions to look over, and …

"Something odd, yes." The somewhat puzzled tone to his voice brought her attention right back to him. "Inside the bathroom it reeked of bleach. As in, very recently applied bleach. I checked, and they only have cleaners come in once a week, on Saturday. It's a budgetary thing."

"They weren't cleaning up the blood, were they?" Emily felt her ire rising at such a concept. Destroying evidence could and would land someone in jail, if anyone on the faculty was stupid enough to do it.

"No, the blood was still there." Armsmaster shook his head slightly. "It was as if they'd picked one cubicle and scrubbed it to within an inch of its life, for no discernible reason. It wasn't even near where the blood was."

"Do you have photos of the scene?" The question was superfluous; of _course_ Armsmaster had photos.

"I do. Emailing them to your computer now." As the desktop terminal pinged to alert her of the incoming mail, Emily mused that the man was an incurable showoff.

She clicked the mouse on the appropriate icon and opened the folder. Two were of Shadow Stalker's sprawled body at the top of a set of stairs, while the rest portrayed a series of views of a typical high school bathroom. She bypassed the sheet-covered body in the middle of the floor and concentrated on the other details. Grimy mirror, tiled walls and floor, six cubicles … "Wait, the doors open outward?"

"Seems to be the way they were constructed." Armsmaster shrugged slightly. "It's not unknown."

"Sounds ridiculous to me." Emily studied the photos. "Which one had the smell of bleach?" Something nagged at her as she looked them over, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"Second one from the door," Armsmaster said helpfully. "In photo four, it's in the middle of the frame."

"Hm." Emily rubbed her chin. "If they thought it was worth walking past the body of a Ward to clean this one cubicle, I want to know why they cleaned it." She looked up at Armsmaster. "I need you to go back there with the most powerful black light emitter you can build or adapt for the purpose. Bleach is used to clean up biological contamination, and I'm strongly convinced there was some sort of spill there. Maybe more blood, even." Which would definitely change the whole scenario, right there. To what, she wasn't certain. "Hopefully you can find something they didn't clean up, and get a sample."

"Roger that, ma'am." Armsmaster didn't sound thrilled by the prospect. "Anything else?"

She considered the question, then looked over the photos again. That nagging feeling came again, and she tapped a fingernail on the screen. "Those feminine product bins don't look quite right. What's going on with them?" The angle wasn't great, but to her point of view, they looked a little bulkier than they really ought to be.

"I'll ask about that, too." If she knew him, he was making a note as he spoke.

"Good." She leaned back in her chair. "We don't have enough data on what happened when Emma and her friends first entered that bathroom. Did Taylor attack them, or did _they_ attack _her?_ Either way, why? One girl against three, with one of the three being Stalker? It's not great odds. In fact, it's shitty odds."

"We're reasonably certain she has bug powers, and there was a knife involved somewhere there as well," Armsmaster reminded her. "Stalker first got stabbed _inside_ the bathroom, not _outside."_

"Yes, but still. Masters, by and large, are squishy. This is why Brutes protect them. They just don't tend to step up and go on the attack." Sitting forward, she propped her chin on her hand as she looked over the photos one more time. "We just don't have enough information."

Correctly taking that as a dismissal, Armsmaster moved toward the door, then stopped and turned around. "There's already a BOLO out on the Hebert girl. Are we treating her as a suspect? Approach with caution?"

Emily frowned. "We'll be calling her a person of interest in the case for the moment. If Emma's lying about what happened, maybe Miss Hebert can clear things up." As a person of interest, it wouldn't be hard to get warrants to search the Hebert girl's house and school locker. With any luck, whatever they found there would bring order to the current chaos.

"And if it turns out she snapped, murdered Shadow Stalker, and carved the swastika into her back?" Armsmaster's voice held a note of inquiry.

"Then we throw the book at her, and ask her why she's copying an Empire kill." Emily shook her head. "But I don't think it's going to come to that."

She didn't pay attention when Armsmaster closed the door behind him. Staring at the photos of Shadow Stalker's fallen body, she frowned. _Did she attack you or did you attack her? What_ _ **happened**_ _in that bathroom?_

After a while, she sagged back into her chair with a sigh. There was something missing; a crucial piece of data that was consistently eluding her. The missing link that would help her make sense of this whole mess.

And she _still_ needed a drink, dammit.

* * *

 **The Next Morning  
Thursday, December 23, 2010  
Taylor**

* * *

It had been one of the worst nights of my life; not only was I sleeping on concrete with a piece of wood for a pillow, but I kept getting flashbacks to the bathroom, with side thoughts of how Dad was going to be taking this. The word 'badly' just didn't seem to be descriptive enough.

I had murdered a Ward.

I had murdered a _Ward._

I had _murdered_ a Ward.

 _I_ had murdered a Ward.

It didn't matter that she'd been bullying me, or even that she'd murdered a guy (well, that part _did_ matter, but I was fairly certain that the PRT neither knew nor cared about Brian Laborn's death at Sophia's hands). They'd just care that a bug-controlling parahuman (me, just to be clear) had murdered a teenage girl with her bugs, and stabbed another teenage girl (who also happened to be a Ward) to death. Did they Birdcage people for that? I was pretty sure they did. Bug powers aside, I was fifteen years old and skinny with it. Imposing, I was not. Intimidating, even less so. They didn't have any rules or guards inside the Birdcage. I'd be a _plaything_. If I was _lucky,_ the women would get hold of me, and even then that was a very loose definition of 'lucky'.

A delicious smell assaulted my nostrils, dragging me bodily out of my restless doze. Opening my eyes revealed blurry forms around me, sitting up and looking around. I did the same, fumbling for my glasses. Once I found them, I looked around for the source of the tantalising odours.

It wasn't hard to find. On the floor directly in front of me was a Fugly Bob's takeout bag. Lisa was just opening another one, and Glory Girl and Panacea had one each. I stretched reflexively, feeling about eighty years old from the cramps and creakiness, then stared at the bags. "Did we order takeout or something?" I asked, feeling more than a little confused. "Because I don't remember that."

"We didn't," Panacea said as she unwrapped a burger. Beside her, Glory Girl had her mouth blissfully stuffed full of fries. "Lisa?"

"I didn't do it," Lisa said, eating a couple of her fries. She raised her head, looking around. "Someone else did it, and I think they're still here."

A wash of fear went through me, and I climbed painfully to my feet. An order from me sent my bugs into high gear, swarming through the building. They found nobody, but that didn't change anything. If someone could get into our hiding place and leave Fugly Bobs bags with us without being spotted, they had to be really good at being sneaky. "If they're here, I can't find them," I said, slowly sitting down again. Then I looked dubiously at my bag. "Maybe we shouldn't eat it. Maybe it's got a sedative or something in it."

Panacea put her hand on her sister's arm. "Sugar, salt, grease and MSG, sure, but no sedatives," she reported. "Maybe they should've included some. She's gonna be hyper for hours now." She looked back over at Lisa. "You're certain they're still around?"

Lisa, caught in the act of taking a large bite out of her burger, waggled her free hand in the air. I reached into my own bag and pulled out a wrapped burger, still warm from the oven. My stomach, which had been silently protesting its lack of food to that point, decided that loud was the way to go. If there'd been windows, they would've rattled. Panacea smirked as I flushed, but she sent a semi-apologetic look my way. "Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't laugh."

Lisa swallowed the bite of burger, then cleared her throat. "I'm about sixty to seventy percent sure there's someone still hanging around. Pretty sure they don't mean us any harm. But there's something I can't figure out." Closing her eyes for a moment, she rubbed at her forehead with forefinger and thumb.

I'd just taken a bite out of my burger (I was hungry, and if I was going to be arrested, I'd rather have a good meal first) when something white flew past my vision. My head turned so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash, but it was just … a paper plane? What the hell was a paper plane doing _here?_ And who threw it?

Even as it spiralled down to the ground—it seemed set up to turn really fast—I sent bugs swarming through the area it had come from. They didn't catch anyone. Nor did they smack into an invisible man, or even a visible one; bug eyesight might've been crap, but it could pick up a human form with ease.

That wasn't to say there was nobody there. My bugs kept hitting a fuzzy space, which confused them and threatened to give me a headache. Worse, the fuzzy space kept moving around in a way that prevented me from getting a fix with my bugs. I really hoped Lisa was right about whoever—or _what_ ever—it was not meaning us harm.

The plane hit the ground with a tiny _thud,_ and Lisa leaned over to pick it up. Unfolding it one-handed—the other hand was still occupied with her burger—she squinted at it. "Yo, peeps," she read, then frowned. "You promise not to gank me if I show my face? Friendly, I promise. I'm totes the awesome person who brung you the Fugly. Peace?"

Lisa read through the note again, then folded it carefully and tucked it into her pocket. Panacea and I stared at her, while Glory Girl seemed to be searching through her bag for more fries. "Well?" I asked.

"Well, what?" Lisa retorted as she got to her feet. "Do I think it's genuine? Yeah. Do I think they're telling the truth? Sure. Do I think they're standing right in front of me?" Her hand lashed out and grabbed something, then pulled it close to her. "You can drop the effect now," she added, and I was pretty sure she wasn't talking to me or Panacea.

One moment I was wondering why she was acting this way, and the next I was staring at a black girl, a year or so younger than myself. She had a purple streak in her hair and wore trashy clothes almost certainly intended to shock and irritate others. In deference to the chill in the air, she also wore a light jacket; Lisa had a firm grim on its collar.

"All right, all _right,"_ groused the girl sullenly. "You can let go now." She turned to face the rest of us. "Hi. Hope you like Fugly's."

"Aisha," Lisa said warningly. "What've you been up to? Did you go after Shadow Stalker on your own after I told you not to?"

"Yeah, you told me." The black girl—Aisha—shot Lisa an impudent grin. "But I still fuckin' got her, didn't I?"

I raised a hand tentatively. "Uh, I think it was actually me that got her. Just saying." As I put my hand down, I wondered why I'd even spoken up. It wasn't something I was exactly proud of, after all. Then something else caught up with me. "Wait, you _know_ each other?"

"Yeah, Bri was my big brother," Aisha said. "She was the one who told me about Shadow Stinker killing him." She pulled free of Lisa's grasp—or rather, Lisa let her pull free—and came over to sit next to me. "Remember the knife? Who do you think gave it to you?"

A lot of things made sense all of a sudden. I'd _thought_ things had gone a bit weird at Winslow. "And you made me into a fucking _murderer,"_ I told her bitterly. "The PRT's gonna fuckin' _Birdcage_ me for that. A cape who killed two girls, one of them a Ward? My feet won't even touch the ground."

"It probably won't come to that," Lisa assured me. "But you're right. There's people looking for all of us, and we're probably safer sticking together. Except you, Aisha. You should go home. Nobody's after you for anything."

"Nuh uh," Aisha said, shaking her head vigorously. "Mom's a druggie who brings home pervert boyfriends. Dad's got a stick so far up his ass it scratches his tonsils. Bri's the only one who ever made it tolerable. I'm never goin' home again. If I get shit for you guys, can I hang with you?"

Lisa looked over at me, then at Panacea. I shrugged; while I was still a little irritated with Aisha for giving me the knife, I couldn't help but recall Sophia's look of murderous rage. She probably would've killed me, if not for Aisha. "I guess?" I mumbled.

"Couldn't hurt," Panacea agreed in the same mildly dubious tone.

"I guess that settles it," Lisa said. "Looks like you're in."

"Awesome!" Aisha bounced to her feet again. "I always wanted to be in a supervillain team. So what are we gonna do next? I vote we rob a bank. I've never robbed a bank before."

Lisa facepalmed, while I shared a look with Panacea. _Oh, boy._

Life on the run was definitely not going to be _boring._

* * *

End of Part Three


	4. Chapter 4

**One Bad Day**

* * *

Part Four: Escalating Matters

* * *

 _[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

* * *

 **Taylor**

* * *

Lisa covered her eyes with her hand. _"No,_ Aisha." Her voice was almost a groan. "We are _not_ going to be robbing a bank. For a start, I'm the only professional villain here. The last thing I want to do is raise my profile right now, and I'm pretty sure Taylor wants to keep her head down for her own reasons. And of course, even if Panacea was _willing_ to break the law so blatantly, there's a good chance that Glory Girl would eviscerate anyone who threatened her."

I looked at Amy, hoping she'd deny the charge. Sure, Glory Girl was different now, but I wasn't quite sure just how badly she'd been affected. Amy dropped her eyes rather than contest the point, causing my stomach to lurch. "She wouldn't ... would she?" I asked.

"If I tell her not to, no," Amy said quietly. "But I can fix her. I _know_ I can _._ I just need time to get it right."

"You won't be able to, not like that," Lisa informed her bluntly. "You're thinking you can go by your memories of what she's like, and rebuild her like that? Won't work. All you'll get is a caricature, based on what you think you remember about her. One that you'll be tweaking for the rest of your life. Until she gets enough self-awareness to understand what you've truly done to her, and either kills you or kills herself. Or both."

"I've got to _try!"_ shrieked Amy, clenching her hands in her hair and squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm not a monster! I'm not!"

The wave of fear made me take a step back, and I was pretty sure I was on the edge of it. Lisa must have caught the full force because she doubled up, gagging. When I looked at Victoria, she was hovering in place with her finger pointed at the erstwhile villain. "Don't upset Amy," she said in her childlike tone. "I will be angry if you do."

"It's all right," I said soothingly, moving forward again and holding my open hands up to show I was harmless. "Nobody's upsetting Amy. And I bet Lisa has a plan to make it work. Right, Lisa?" I prayed I was reading the situation correctly. If Lisa didn't have an alternate, she wouldn't have said 'not like that' … I hoped, anyway. I'd already noted her tendency to go overboard in destroying opposing ideas before putting her own up in their place.

It took Amy a few seconds to register what I was saying, then she turned to Lisa. "Is that true? Do you know how to fix this?" The raw hope in her face was almost too much for me to bear; for all of our sakes, I prayed Lisa did actually have a solution.

Fortunately, Vicky caught Amy's change in mood, and the fear aura died away. She drifted back down to the ground, but her eyes never left Lisa.

Lisa hacked and coughed a few times, then spat off to the side. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she straightened up again. "Yeah, of course I've got a plan," she said. "I've even got a backup plan. It's dangerous and difficult as fuck, but that's what you get when you pull this sort of shit. If monumental fuckups were easy to unravel, they wouldn't _be_ monumental fuckups."

I winced at the momentary flare of anger on Amy's face, but the healer seemed to accept the judgemental words in the spirit they were offered. "I'll do it," she declared. "Anything. Just tell me how to fix her."

"Well, here's the thing," Lisa stated baldly. _"You_ don't fix her. Your power isn't set up that way, any more than a pencil with an eraser on the end is good at reconstructing what's been written after the eraser's been over it. We're going to have to go farther afield for this. Ever hear of Toybox?"

I blinked. "Uh, is that a cape?" To me, it sounded like something a Tinker would call himself. Though what a toy-based Tinker had to do with this situation, I had no idea.

"No, it's not." Amy shook her head. For the first time, she seemed to be engaging with Lisa. "It's a bunch of rogue capes, though they _are_ all Tinkers. You think one of them could …" She paused, enlightenment spreading over her face. "Shit, of _course_. Cranial?"

"Cranial," Lisa confirmed. "Apparently she's _the_ go-to person for memory transfer and personality implantation. Not that I figure there's much in the way of a legitimate market for that sort of thing." She must've been feeling better, because her trademark grin had returned to her face. "However, in Vicky's case, it's just what the doctor ordered."

Amy nodded slowly, but then she grimaced. "Okay, I get that. But after all that, we're still stuck with the problem that my memories of her are probably unreliable. How do we get around that?"

That got her an eye-roll from Lisa. "Seriously, were you even _listening_ when I said it was going to be difficult and dangerous?"

I decided to stick my oar in at this point. "Uh, I thought you were saying that contacting Toybox was going to be the difficult and dangerous bit. Or maybe they'd make us go and do stuff for them before they'd help us."

"Hah, nope." Lisa's grin was back in full force by now. She shook her head. "Finding Toybox is easy, if you have the right contacts, and I've got those. Paying for the service will be a bit harder, but money's easy to come by if you know what you're doing and you're not too fussed about legalities."

"Hah!" I jumped as Aisha faded back into view. _Holy shit, Brian had a sister, and she's been standing here all this time, and_ _ **I didn't know she was there!**_ "I _knew_ we were gonna be robbing a bank! Someone hand me the phone, 'cause I _called_ it!"

Lisa facepalmed, properly this time. "Bank robbery is about the _worst_ way to make money there is," she explained patiently. "But we can burn that bridge when we come to it. No, that's not the difficult or dangerous part."

"So what is it?" Amy had a peculiar expression on her face, as if she wasn't sure that she wanted to know.

Steepling her fingers, Lisa looked at us over them, obviously doing her best to portray a notorious supervillain. Her shit-eating grin didn't hurt the image, either. "We have to kidnap Glory Girl's friends and family, of course."

* * *

 **Danny**

* * *

"Okay, Hebert. Up an' at 'em. Your ride's here."

The words sliced through Danny's uneasy sleep like a hot knife through soft butter. He blinked his eyes open, then rubbed at them to get rid of the crap in the corners. As he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bench, he felt his spine pop in half a dozen places. Either he was getting old, or that was seriously not a good place to sleep. At first glance, he was going with 'both'.

Fumbling around half-blind, he located his glasses on the floor beside the bench, wondering for the first time since he'd woken up exactly why he was sleeping on a hard bench rather than his soft bed. Or who it was that had woken him up with those brisk words. Putting his glasses on, he looked in the direction of the speaker and found his questions were being answered with more questions.

Staring around the interior of the jail cell, he frowned. "What the hell am I doing here?" he asked almost plaintively.

The police officer on the other side of the bars shrugged. "You punched a cop," he said. "That shit tends to get you arrested. But hey, it's your lucky day."

 _Punched a … what the fuck?_ "Wait, why … ?" Danny's question trailed off as his treacherous memory started replaying scenes from the previous night in his head. "Ah." And now that he thought about it, his knuckles _were_ kind of sore. Also, he had two sore spots under his shirt. Those were where the taser darts had gone in. He wasn't surprised he had trouble remembering what had happened after that. Or before it, for that matter.

"Yeah, _ah,"_ the cop snorted. "But we aren't runnin' a bed and breakfast here, and word's come down from on high that you're to be handed over to the PRT. Who just showed up. So get on your feet and back up to the bars." By way of explanation, he waved a pair of handcuffs. "You might look like a skinny drink of water, but from the way you laid out Bannon last night, I'm taking zero chances with you."

"PRT?" asked Danny, feeling as though he still had some mileage to catch up in this conversation. "What does the PRT want with me?"

"Buddy, I am sincerely fucked if I know," the cop replied. "But it's not my job to ask. It's my job to escort you out there so we can hand you over. So unless you really feel like staying in there and being charged with assaulting a police officer, be a pal and back up to the bars, huh?" He jingled the handcuffs again.

"Right. Yeah." Climbing to his feet, Danny shambled up to the bars. As he did so, he saw a second officer standing off to the side, hand on his taser. It seemed they really weren't taking any chances with him. Resignedly, he turned around and shoved his hands awkwardly through the bars.

"That's the way." A hand roughly grabbed one of his wrists and he felt the cold metal closing over it, then the process was repeated with his other wrist. "Okay, good. Now, we're gonna escort you out there and hand you over. The paperwork's been filed. Give us any trouble and we _will_ tase your sorry ass and drag you out. Got it?"

"Got it," Danny replied numbly.

"Good. Now step forward away from the bars."

Obediently, Danny moved away from the entrance to the cell. He heard it open, and turned around as the two police officers entered the cell. Each of them took hold of one of his arms, and they walked him out of the cell and down the corridor. He didn't try to resist, which was a good thing, because it wouldn't have done him any good.

Waiting for him was a single PRT soldier, accompanied by a superhero. Shorter than him—the only capes in Brockton Bay that weren't were some of the villains—she wore well-cut camouflage fatigues and a flag-patterned scarf across her face, as well as a similarly-themed sash around her waist. The cops around her seemed more concerned by the M-60 she was carrying across her shoulders than by the weapon held by the PRT trooper. He knew who she was, of course; Miss Militia was a household name.

"Here's your boy," announced the officer who was holding his left arm. "One Daniel Hebert, in good condition. Not sure exactly what you want him for, but the paperwork all checks out."

"Thanks, guys," Miss Militia said. "We'll take him from here." She nodded to the PRT soldier, who stepped forward and took hold of Danny's arm. She hadn't answered the implied question, and he suspected it would've stayed unanswered even if the cop had asked it directly.

They went out through the back of the station, where a PRT van waited patiently. The soldier holding his arm never spoke, and Danny wasn't even sure if it was a guy or a girl behind that opaque faceplate, though he suspected the former due to their sheer bulk. He was made to stand and wait while they took his cuffs off. The back of the van was opened and the trooper directed him to climb inside, then followed him in.

If he'd thought they were going to be any less vigilant about him than the police were, he would've been somewhat mistaken. Manacles were locked around his wrists and the chain led down through a ring-bolt on his chair to another one on the floor. So long as he sat back in the reasonably-comfortable seat, he had no problems, but any attempt to get up and escape or attack his guard would end very quickly.

The rear doors (open so that Miss Militia could observe the procedure, he was certain) closed, and a few moments later he heard the passenger-side door open and close as well. The engine started, and the van began to move.

Danny turned his head to look at the guard, seeing only his distorted reflection in the faceplate. "Can I ask you what's going on?"

He didn't really expect an answer so when the guard did speak, he was somewhat surprised. "Sir, my job is to guard you," the hollow disembodied voice replied. "If you attempt to get out of those chains, I _will_ foam you. Do you understand?" The tone was so matter-of-fact that the guy had to have said that exact same thing many times before.

"Oh, uh, sure." Danny subsided. "But _can_ I ask you what's going on?"

" _Yes, you can ask questions."_ Miss Militia's voice came over speakers mounted toward the front of the compartment. _"But this vehicle isn't secure, so we're limited in the answers we can give. We'll have more information for you when we get to the PRT building."_

"Right. Gotcha." Danny _still_ wasn't sure what was going on, and why the PRT wanted to talk to him about the bullshit charges against Taylor—because really, what _other_ reason did anyone in authority want him for right now?—so he settled back to enjoy the ride. Or at least, not hate it too much.

* * *

 **Sarah Pelham**

 **Outside the Dallon Household**

* * *

Neil knocked again. "She's not answering," he said. The comment was unnecessary; Sarah could easily see that her sister wasn't answering the door. More worryingly, neither of her nieces had answered the door either. Which meant they were either sleeping in after whatever adventures they'd had being out and about, or they were _still_ out and about. The second scenario was the problematic one.

"Fine, I'll use my key," she said, bowing to the inevitable. As she dug it out of her purse, she wondered if Carol had actually taken the girls out somewhere. The garage doors were closed, so she couldn't tell one way or the other. _No,_ she decided as she fitted the key into the lock. The state of mind that Carol had been in, she wouldn't be likely to give Amy a lift anywhere. Or let them out of her sight for at least twenty-four hours.

The lock clicked, and she dropped the keyring back into her purse. Turning the handle, she pushed the door open. As she stepped inside, she sniffed as she smelled a strong odour.

"Whew," Neil said as he followed her inside. "Smells like a distillery in here."

It didn't, quite, but the whiff of alcohol was strong in the still air inside the house. That was when she heard the disjointed snoring, which was quite unlike Carol _or_ either of the kids. Her eyes met Neil's in a silent question, and he shrugged in reply. _All right, then._ Hoping that Carol hadn't brought some strange guy home, but not sure what else it could be, Sarah drifted into the air and threw a light shield around herself. _Probably overreacting but better safe than sorry._ Silently, she floated through the doorway into the living room … and stopped dead in mid-air.

"Carol?" she exclaimed in shock, her feet hitting the ground again with a thud.

Neil crowded in past her, then came to a halt as well. "Fuck," he said almost admiringly. "She's _plastered."_

He wasn't wrong. Carol lay sprawled on the couch, emitting snores that wouldn't have been out of place coming from a malfunctioning rock-crusher. Her hair was a mess, and one arm trailed off the side of the couch, a glass lying on its side a few inches from her fingertips. A large discoloured patch in the carpet next to the glass, along with the residual pooling of amber liquid in the glass itself, told them where the smell was coming from. On the coffee table, a bottle sat with only half an inch or so of matching fluid in the bottom of it.

"Carol doesn't drink," Sarah said automatically, then flushed as the evidence of the scene before her made it plain that yes, Carol had taken at least one drink. "Well, I didn't _think_ she drank."

"Looks like she took it up in a hurry," Neil observed. "Need a hand getting her upstairs?" He frowned as she stared at him in puzzlement. "Well, I figured you'd want to get her cleaned up and into bed, is all. 'Cause she's not gonna be waking up from a bender like that till at least midday."

Sarah sighed. "Good point. I got this." Carefully, she formed a force field between Carol and the couch and lifted her sister into the air. Neil helpfully lifted Carol's dangling arm and draped it over her stomach. Turning, she made her burden waft its way toward the stairs. Literally hovering over Carol, she accompanied her sister upward to the second floor, then stopped. "Do me a favour?" she called over her shoulder.

Neil paused in the act of picking up the dropped glass. "Sure, babe, what do you want?"

"Check on the girls? Just open their bedroom doors and look in? If they're home and still asleep, I don't want to be worrying while I'm dealing with Carol." She kept going, up the stairs and toward the bathroom. Hopefully a shower would wake Carol up. And if not, she needed to sleep it off in her own bed, not on that couch.

"Not a problem," her husband replied from downstairs. "I'll just put this in the sink."

Sarah allowed herself a tiny smile as she navigated her snoring—and yes, drooling—sister in through the bathroom door. _Same old Neil._ He was always careful about leaving things lying around on the floor, usually because if he stood on anything like that, it broke.

Undressing a sleeping person wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world, especially as Sarah had to make sure to keep a skin-level force field up at all times. While she didn't _think_ Carol would spontaneously manifest an energy blade and try to kill her, she'd never seen her sister drunk like this _ever._ So safe was definitely better than sorry.

Eventually, however, she got Carol undressed and into the shower, supported by a rough framework of force fields. Her sister mumbled and moved a little under the pounding spray of hot water, but never truly woke up, even when Sarah washed her face with a wet cloth. _Maybe I should use cold water instead._ But she didn't want to be _cruel_ to Carol, and there was still going to be a massive hangover to deal with once her sister woke up.

The shower done with, she dressed Carol in pyjamas she had Neil locate and hand in around the door, then floated her off to bed using the same forcefield-stretcher she'd used to get her up the stairs. None of this was physically strenuous, but by the time she pulled the covers over her sister and sat back on the edge of the bed, she felt like she'd been through the wringer. "Gah." Looking around as Neil leaned into the room, she raised her eyebrows interrogatively. "Please tell me the girls are in their rooms."

His grimace told her everything she didn't want to know. "Sorry. No sign of them. Not even a note on the fridge telling her they were going out."

Gusting out a sigh, Sarah stood up. "Okay, this is starting to seriously concern me. Let's go downstairs, then you call Eric and I'll call Crystal, and see if between us we can't get a list of friends they might be staying with."

Neil nodded, his face set in lines of worry. "Should we alert the PRT that they're missing?"

Up until now, Sarah had dismissed the idea, but now she began to seriously consider it. With the PRT, Protectorate and Wards all looking for the two girls, the chances of locating them would go up dramatically. On the other hand … "Let's hold off on that until we've checked with their friends," she decided. "The last thing we want is to spread _any_ sort of rumour that New Wave is coming apart at the seams." After Mark's death, that had become a major concern for the both of them. "But if we can't find them then …" She didn't have to say any more.

Her husband nodded. "Got it."

Together, they went downstairs.

* * *

 **Coil**

* * *

Thomas Calvert was _pissed._

In a series of events that he was still working to sort out, one of his catspaw groups—including the very useful Tattletale—had slipped from his grasp. The death of Grue he could have gotten around, and in fact he'd thought Hardcase had things in hand. He'd advised the young man to keep Tattletale on a tight rein because he had no illusions about how she could twist orders to suit herself, given no oversight. The condition—or rather, the state of dress—in which he'd found Hardcase suggested that maybe he should've been a little more circumspect in how he worded his orders, but that was beyond the point.

The _point_ was that his Tattletale had defied his orders _and_ killed his subordinate, who was also her team leader. He'd known she wanted to cut loose from his leadership, but murder was a line she'd never crossed before. She tended to destroy people with words, not weapons. Now she'd done it once, he couldn't trust her not to do it again, and he definitely couldn't trust her not to try to put a bullet in _him_ at some point. She had to die, or appear to die, in such a way that sent a message to the rest of his minions: _cross me and this is what happens to you._

Of course, if he could get hold of her on the quiet, her death wasn't totally necessary. He'd been working on a backup plan for a while, just in case he managed to get his hands on another Thinker. It involved copious amounts of addictive drugs, though in order to strike just the right balance (he didn't want the end result to be babbling uselessness or death, after all) he'd need someone with the right skills to keep the subject alive, well and mostly lucid. Lacking another Thinker, and with her field usefulness at an end, Tattletale would make a perfect test subject.

An almost equally irritating aspect was that he now had no real way to maintain his control over Regent or Bitch without revealing himself to them as their mysterious boss. They were far more useful masquerading as part of an independent team than as two disparate capes without Thinker or Shaker support. With the deaths of both Grue and Hardcase and the defection of Tattletale, the reputation of the Undersiders as the untouchable escape artist team was gone forever. In fact, the Undersiders themselves were finished as a team, unless the indolent Regent and the savagely uncaring Bitch could be persuaded to keep up the pretext. Maybe if he ordered Circus to join … but the androgynous cape had already made it clear that she worked alone.

 _God_ _ **damn**_ _it._

As was his habit, he'd spent the previous night both in his base keeping up with the current situation in Brockton Bay—and trying to find Tattletale!— _and_ getting a restful night's sleep. On rising, he'd dropped the 'base' timeline, split time again, and called in sick with one of his timelines. That timeline had him now in the base again, micro-managing the day-to-day operations in an effort to get a lead on his wayward Thinker. In the other, he was in his office, dealing with the inevitable paperwork that cropped up for a PRT strike team commander.

The entire purpose of the visit had been to observe the interaction between Hardcase and Tattletale. While the new team leader had been boastfully confident about his ability to keep 'his people' in line, Calvert was all too aware that field reports could often differ drastically from the objective reality on the ground, so he'd wanted to drop in unexpectedly—while Regent and Bitch were both out, of course—and see for himself.

He'd seen, all right. Hardcase was dead, with an arrow in his eye—where the _hell_ had the bitch gotten an _arrow_ from?—and Tattletale was in the wind. A cursory search of the base had assured him that the other two capes had not bolted in the same way; all their belongings were still there. The trouble was, what to do with them?

With a sigh, the version of him in the base picked up his landline and selected Circus' number from the directory. A tap of the finger and the phone began to ring.

" _Hello?"_ The tone was cautious. Circus must have recognised his number.

"Circus, are you busy?" It never hurt to pretend to be caring about his subordinates' time.

" _A little. Why?"_ He heard a shuffling noise, then a grunt. However, she'd answered the phone, so it couldn't be too drastic.

It was time to get her attention. "I'd like to double your remittance, for additional duties."

" _The money would be nice, but what additional duties?"_ She hadn't lost the cautious tone. Some people, he decided, were just too paranoid.

 _Oh, well. In for a penny._ "I need someone to step in as leader of the Undersiders, and you're the first person I thought of."

There was a rude noise over the phone. _"First person after Hardcase, you mean. Why, what happened to him?"_

Well, at least she hadn't heard _that_ much about what was going on. Though how she knew about Hardcase in the first place, he wasn't sure. "He's no longer in the picture. Tattletale murdered him and ran. Without strong leadership, Bitch and Regent are likely to just wander off. I need you to provide that strong leadership."

" _Four times."_ She grunted again. _"Final offer."_

"Four times … ?" He wasn't quite sure what she meant. Surely she didn't intend …

" _Not double my usual. Four times. Those two are trouble for any team leader, and I don't_ _ **do**_ _teams. I want four times the usual pay, or no deal."_

He grimaced, but she had him over a barrel and he knew it. "Fine, on one condition."

" _No promises."_ At least she wasn't shooting him down before even hearing it.

"You make it your priority to hunt down Tattletale and deliver her to me, alive. Any other level of injury, I don't care. She just has to be able to hear and speak." And feel, but that was a given. Torture might be only so-so at getting specific information out of people, but it was a _wonderful_ way of breaking them.

" _You're going to send her two previous teammates to help hunt her down? You realise that's got the potential to backfire really badly."_ Her tone was thoughtful rather than dismissive, which was encouraging.

"Bitch only cares about her dogs, and Regent doesn't care about anyone," he pointed out. Still, Circus had a point. "But I'll be doubling their pay for this particular mission, just in case," he decided.

" _And a bonus on completion,"_ she added, apparently just to yank his chain. _"We want 'em to feel good about it afterward, right?"_

He gritted his teeth. Next she'd be demanding the pound of flesh closest to his heart. Still, she was a professional, and her words made sense. "Including yourself, I have no doubt?"

" _Naturally."_ He could almost _see_ the shit-eating grin on her face. _"So, we have a deal?"_

At some point in the future, he decided, he and Circus were going to have a long talk about why she shouldn't antagonise her boss. There was likely to be a lot of screaming involved. If she was lucky (for a given definition of 'lucky') it would be in a disposable timeline. "We have a deal," he conceded.

" _Good,"_ she said brightly. _"I'll get right on it."_

He put the phone down again and leaned back in his ergonomic chair. It was time to check on the Pitter situation, he decided. Now that Tattletale had essentially volunteered to be his captive Thinker, he needed to push forward on that front faster than ever. Still trying to decide whether he was going to take one or both of her eyes as payback for the trouble she was putting him through, he picked up the phone again.

* * *

 **Danny**

* * *

The interrogation room seemed to be an exact duplicate of the ones he'd seen in cop shows, from the uncomfortable-looking chair behind the bolted-down table to the wide mirror on the opposite wall. He wondered absently if anyone was actually fooled by the one-way glass any more, or if it was just tradition.

The PRT trooper pointed at the chair and he sat down, fully aware that any show of defiance on his part would be remarkably unwise at this point. After all, they'd taken him away from the police, who would've otherwise been charging him with punching that one cop. Which made him wonder what the PRT wanted him for. _Is this about Taylor?_ He couldn't imagine why. As messy as it was, he couldn't imagine the PRT involving themselves in a school stabbing— _whoever_ it was who'd done it. He spread his hands on the table, glad that they'd at least left the cuffs off of him.

The door opened again, and a heavy-set woman wearing a blue business suit entered, carrying a briefcase. The PRT trooper saluted, and she casually returned it. Miss Militia followed her into the room, carrying a folding chair. Unfolded, the chair was placed on the other side of the table and the overweight woman lowered herself into it, placing the briefcase on the floor beside her. Miss Militia moved to the other side of the room to the guard and took up a similar posture. Danny didn't miss the large pistol in the holster at her side, however.

"Mr Hebert, my name is Emily Piggot," the woman opposite him said, her steel-grey eyes fixed on his face. "Do you know who I am?"

"You're the Director of the PRT in Brockton Bay," Danny replied. He hadn't known that all at once, but the salute plus a few half-remembered TV appearances had clued him in. The name had just nailed it down for him. He thought he could see dark roots in her blonde pageboy bob. Underneath the softening effect of the extra weight, he caught a glimpse of a frighteningly intense woman, one who'd never stepped aside for anything. _What_ _ **happened**_ _to you?_ he wondered. "What I don't know is why I'm here, and what you want from me."

"It's about your daughter," Piggot said bluntly. Her eyes never left his face.

"Let me guess: the bullshit murder accusation? Because that's all it is. Total bullshit. Taylor would never hurt anyone." As he spoke, his mind sought out possibilities. Why was the PRT interrogating him over this? Again, he drew a total blank. He considered clamming up and asking for a lawyer, but if he did that, he'd never find out what they really wanted.

"Yes and no," Piggot retorted. "Taylor did stab someone, but she's not the murderer. Someone else is. We're trying to find out who, and why, and what happened."

Danny felt the world waver slightly, but he took a deep breath and forced himself to focus. _Okay, so they're not trying to pin the murder on Taylor. Still, it's not good._ "What do you need me for?"

"We need Taylor to come in, to tell us her side of things," Piggot explained briefly. "But before that happens, we need to find out some information from you."

"Okay ..." He wasn't sure quite what was going on, but at least they weren't screaming accusations at him. "What do you want to know?"

What Piggot said next came in from left field. "Would it surprise you to know that the victim was black?"

"Why would that make a difference?" Danny shot back. "Black, white, Asian, Hispanic; what's your point?"

Director Piggot never hesitated. "The _point_ is that we're certain the murder was racially motivated, and we're trying to find out if Taylor is involved in anything to do with that."

He placed both hands flat on the table and leaned forward. In his peripheral vision, he saw both Miss Militia and the PRT guard take a step closer, but he didn't care. "She's not. I taught my little girl better than to think like that. No way is she one of _those_ racist assholes. No how, no way, never. You've got a better chance of getting Martin Luther King to join up." Breathing heavily, he subsided back into his chair.

"Understood." Reaching down, Piggot took up the briefcase and put it on the table. The clicks of the latches opening echoed in the room, then she lifted the lid and took out a form. "We're legally not allowed to tell you any more until you sign this." Placing a cheap plastic pen on top of the form, she skated it over to Danny.

He took it and turned it around. Looking at the top of the form, he discovered that it was a non-disclosure agreement with his name and details already filled out. Unfortunately, it didn't tell him what information he was enjoined not to disclose, except that it referred to 'details pertinent to the secret identity of a cape or capes' which could apparently be found in 'Document 3A'.

 _Do they think Taylor stabbed a_ _ **cape**_ _?_ It was the only conclusion that made any sense. _No wonder they were so anxious to get me away from the cops._

He ran his eye down the NDA, looking for any clauses that might lock him into anything else. Nothing jumped out at him, so he took up the pen and signed it, then leaned back in his chair. "So, how exactly do you think a fifteen year old girl got the better of a cape, knife or no knife?"

"That's what we're trying to find out." Her expression sour, the Director retrieved the NDA. "Sophia Hess was the Ward known as Shadow Stalker. Yesterday, there was an altercation between your daughter and her, as well as two other girls. Shadow Stalker was stabbed repeatedly, then her throat was cut and a swastika carved in her back. Another girl was swarmed by a mass of venomous bugs, and died as a result. The third girl got away and raised the alarm, specifically naming your daughter as the instigator. Taylor escaped in the confusion, and is still at large. Due to a mix-up in communication, the police reached your house before we did, and you were apparently arrested for attacking them."

"I didn't _attack_ them," Danny said defensively. "One of the assholes told me my daughter was going away for murder, so I punched him out."

"I understand he has a fractured jaw," Piggot replied blandly. "For the record, that charge has been dropped, but don't try that here."

Danny nodded. "Okay. Got it. So this Sophia Hess was the Ward called Shadow Stalker. I think I saw her on TV once. And you think Taylor attacked her because she was black?"

"It was a working theory, especially after we saw the swastika," Miss Militia interjected. "So you're absolutely sure that your daughter doesn't have Empire leanings." It wasn't a question.

"One hundred percent," Danny said. "She's got no tattoos that I know of. She hasn't shaved her head. Hell, ask her best friend. Emma Barnes. _She'll_ vouch for Taylor."

"Mr Hebert …" Director Piggot's voice was almost gentle. "Emma Barnes was the third girl. The one who raised the alarm."

 _What. The. Fuck?_

* * *

 **Emily Piggot**

* * *

Danny Hebert's face went utterly slack at that piece of information. Either he'd been unaware of the rift between his daughter and Emma Barnes, or he was the best actor Emily had ever met, bar none. Just as Emily was going to push for further information, her phone rang.

 _God damn it. Of all the timing._ She took the phone from her pocket and checked the number, then stood up. "I have to take this," she said. "We'll resume when I return."

Stepping out of the interrogation room, she pressed the icon to answer the phone. "What is it, Armsmaster?" she asked tersely. "I was in the middle of something important."

" _Your hunch paid off, Director,"_ the Tinker replied, sounding as happy as he ever did. _"There was definitely something strange going on in this bathroom."_

Emily's head came up and she instinctively took a couple of steps down the hall, away from the interrogation room. "Explain." 'Something strange' could mean a lot of things.

" _I built the black-light emitter as you suggested. It's a little strong—the paint's bubbled in a few places—but I got readings that suggest something biological got splattered all over that stall. Something they tried_ _ **really hard**_ _to eliminate."_ He sounded immensely satisfied with himself.

Emily wondered just how powerful a UV emitter had to be to make paint bubble, but shook her head. She had more important things to worry about. "Did you get a sample?"

" _Yes. There was a single droplet on the underside of the toilet seat. I missed it on my first two passes, but got it on my third. My portable crime lab analysed it as containing traces of a bactericide, blood, insect remains and a fibrous material. But it's the blood that's interesting."_

Armsmaster's portable crime lab took up about two cubic feet of his motorcycle and contained the most miniaturised automated analysis equipment that Piggot had ever seen. She was curious about the bactericide, but it seemed he wanted her to ask about the blood. "How is the blood interesting?"

" _Because it's menstrual blood. Different in composition from normal blood. That droplet came from a feminine waste product bin. One that bugs had gotten into."_

His conclusion was absolutely inescapable, and triggered a memory of a photo. "Wasn't there something about the bins there …?"

" _Yes. I asked about those. It seemed some of the students were using the regular ones for stashing drugs and weapons, so they got in a special model, a little larger, that could be locked. Of course, the locks all went missing in the first two weeks, and they never bothered replacing them."_

Emily was somehow not surprised. This was Winslow, after all. "So you're saying that a sanitary bin got _emptied_ into that toilet stall. Was there any trace of it on Miss Clements or Shadow Stalker or Miss Barnes?"

" _None that I saw. But again, you're correct. After I figured that out, I checked the toilets on either side for rubber residue on the seats or lids. And I found some. One set matches the tread patterns of the shoes Miss Clements was wearing. I haven't matched the other set."_

The visual imagery matched. Two girls standing on the toilet lids, hoisting sanitary bins over the top of the divider, to dump the contents on … "This was an attack on Taylor Hebert."

" _Agreed. I checked on the bins throughout the school. They were reluctant to let me, so I had to lean on them a bit, but I found a pair in the teachers' restrooms which hadn't been used at all, and had been scrubbed clean on the outside."_

"The school actively tried to cover up the prior attack, and pin it all on the Hebert girl." Emily felt her anger rising. "I'm betting the other set of tread patterns you find matches either Miss Barnes or Shadow Stalker."

" _That's my conclusion."_ Armsmaster didn't sound as angry as Emily was, but he tended to get more absorbed in his work. _"I'll be writing it all up in my report, and I'll be checking Shadow Stalker's effects once I return to base."_

"Good." This was going to lead to serious legal trouble for Winslow. How _much_ legal trouble depended on what Taylor Hebert had to say for herself once she was brought in, but Emily was sure Blackwell would lose her job over this. "I need to get back to what I was doing. Good work, Armsmaster."

" _Thank you, Director."_ He cut the call off then, about two seconds before she would've done so herself. She headed back toward the interrogation room, mulling over the new information. Would having a sanitary bin dumped over her have caused the Hebert girl to trigger? It seemed at least vaguely plausible, and would explain where the powers had come from.

Still, a knife wasn't powers, so she had to have had it before the whole confrontation. Which indicated at least a certain amount of intent to cause harm. She could've been carrying it to protect herself, but a knife usually worked better as a deterrent than an actual close-in weapon. Unless, of course, she didn't show it to anyone until she was in a clinch, and then she stabbed Shadow Stalker.

Emily pushed open the door and entered the interrogation room. Everyone was where she'd left them; Danny still sitting at the table, with Miss Militia and the guard doing a good impression of bookends at either side of the room. "Now, then," she said as she took a seat once more. "Where were we?"

* * *

 **Danny**

* * *

"Emma Barnes." Danny still had trouble saying the name in that context. "You're saying _she_ said Taylor killed those girls?" It was just not believable.

"Exactly." Piggot leaned forward. "Moreover, she claims that she and your daughter drifted apart after they reached high school. However, I've just received information suggesting that not only were Emma and Taylor on the outs, but Emma and some of her friends may have been victimising Taylor. Had you heard if she'd been having trouble at school with anyone at all?"

Danny shook his head, his mind spinning. "No. Nothing at all." Recalling the reason for the lack of communication, he had the grace to look sheepish. "But we haven't been talking all that much recently. My wife, Taylor's mother, died just a few years ago, and we're still not totally recovered from that."

Piggot's expression softened slightly. "My condolences. I know what it's like to lose someone." It didn't last long. "So, you had no idea that anyone was picking on Taylor? That she may have decided to bring something to school to defend herself with? A knife, for instance?"

"No." Danny shook his head decisively. "Definitely not. What sort of a knife was it, anyway? A kitchen knife?"

"We don't think so." The Director held out her hands about ten inches apart. "From the shape of the wounds, it was a double-edged fighting knife of some sort. Do you have any idea where she might have gotten her hands on one of those?"

This was getting more and more surreal for Danny. "No. I keep _telling_ you. Taylor's not a violent person. If you'd told me she had a kitchen knife, we'd have had something to talk about, because she could've grabbed one on the way to school. But if you're talking about a combat knife, not a chance. Taylor doesn't have that many friends, and none at all who'd be able to get a knife like that for her."

Director Piggot nodded. "Understood. Well, when we bring her in, we can ask her. In the meantime, I need to ask you one more question. And I want you to think carefully about the answer."

"No promises." Danny was being cautious about this. Nothing they'd asked him so far had threatened to pin any crimes on him, which was why he hadn't asked for a lawyer in earnest yet, but that could change.

"That's fair." Piggot leaned forward slightly. "Are you aware your daughter has powers?"

 _What. The. Fuck?_

* * *

 **Taylor**

* * *

"No, wait, what the fuck?" Amy waved her hands back and forth in the classic 'cut off' gesture. "No way. We're not kidnapping her friends and my family." She paused, frowning. _"Why_ do you want to kidnap them? We aren't villains. At least, _I'm_ not. And nor is Vicky."

"I really gotta chime in here," I added. "Kidnapping is not the way to keep ourselves on the down-low. Just saying."

"It's for a good cause," Lisa insisted. "We get everyone together in Cranial's lab, wherever _that_ is. Then she records all their memories of Vicky. The good, the bad, the mediocre, whatever. Everything that they ever saw her do. Then she meshes it all together and uses that to build a gestalt personality. That gets overlaid on Vicky's brain, tying in with what's already there." She made a flourishing gesture with her hand. "Voila."

It made sense. I hadn't even known about Cranial's _existence_ , but Lisa made it sound so simple.

"Yeah," protested Amy. "But _kidnapping?_ That means we have to fight them, and if they all come after us at once, we'll probably lose."

She definitely had a point. "Suppose we don't kidnap them," I suggested. "Why don't we just _ask_ them? I'm sure they'd volunteer to help Vicky get her mind back."

Lisa sighed and looked pointedly at Amy. "Brandish," she said bluntly.

"Well, she _might_ not freak out," Amy said defensively.

Lisa's expression was dubious at best. "Your stepmom has gone even more crazy-bitch since your stepdad died. I give it a seventy-thirty chance that the moment you even _hint_ about what you've done to her prize daughter, she'll come after you with her discount lightsaber. And what if they just refuse to go along with it? I know _I'd_ be justifiably concerned about letting a rogue Tinker rummage around in my head."

"Well, we've got to do _something,"_ argued Amy.

"Okay, how about this." Aisha stepped forward. "Why don't we go with the 'ask them nicely' thing and if they don't go along with it, we jump straight to 'kidnap'?"

I shared a glance with Lisa. "That could work … I guess?" I ventured.

"Better than nothing," Lisa agreed, then looked at Amy. "Well?"

Amy tangled both hands in her hair and clenched her eyes shut. "Arrgh," she groaned. "Why does this shit keep happening to me?"

"That's not a no," Lisa observed.

"No, it ain't," Aisha agreed.

"Plan 'kidnapping is plan B' is a go," I said, wondering when my world got so weird.

"Arrgh."

* * *

End of Part Four


	5. Chapter 5

**One Bad Day**

* * *

Part Five: Tripling Down

* * *

 _[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

* * *

 **Taylor**

* * *

"No, we _can't_ just walk up to your friends and family and ask them to donate their memories of Vicky," Lisa said patiently. "If Plan B is gonna have a chance of working, we have to set it up _before_ we kick off Plan A. Otherwise, if Plan A fizzles, we're left hanging in the wind."

I listened to her with half an ear while I played with my powers. After I lashed out in the bathroom and killed Madison, I'd done my best to shut that power away from my mind. But now, fed and rested and no longer strung out on panic, I'd decided that if I was gonna go down, I'd go down with style. So I reached out for the power again, and it responded. And with it came a surprise. I could control more than bugs.

"But what if we don't _need_ Plan B?" Amy insisted. "What if they just say yes? That means we won't have to do all this running in circles to get Plan B set up. Everyone agrees, we go to talk to Cranial, and Vicky gets made better." She glanced across the area we were currently hiding out to where Vicky was sitting and humming a simple tune. Vicky looked up and gave Amy a smile and a wave. "As soon as possible," she said, more to herself than to Lisa.

"If we don't need Plan B, we don't need it," I said. "But it's better to have Plan B and _not_ need it than to not have it and need it." It was something that Mom used to say, but definitely appropriate in the circumstances.

Lisa gave me a grateful look. "Exactly. And how much time would we waste if Plan A went sideways and we had to fall back on Plan B, but it wasn't ready to roll?"

I'd used bugs when I killed Madison because they'd been ready to hand and they were incredibly easy to control. A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million, there was no upper limit to how many I could direct at once. But once I started out playing with bugs, I soon became aware of other minds moving around, far more complex than the tiny sparks of the bugs. The more complicated the mind, the harder it would be for me to affect it, but as I attuned myself to my new-found capabilities, I found that I was even able to detect Lisa, Amy and Vicky as shadowy images to my power.

Amy set her jaw stubbornly. "I just don't like the idea of just … well, just planning to abduct my friends and family, like we were _criminals._ What if they get hurt?"

"That's what having a plan is all about," Lisa reiterated. I could see a stress wrinkle starting to form between her eyes. "We can cover all the eventualities. And if they get hurt, you can fix them." She got up from the box she'd been sitting on. "I'm not gonna lie. The longer we take, the harder the odds are against us on this one. The faster we get them where we need them, one way or the other, the easier it'll be to get to the others." She rubbed her butt. "And we've really got to find a better place to stay. This is just about passable for one night of hiding, but it's got _zero_ modern conveniences. The more we have to sneak out for food, water, going to the bathroom, the more chance we have of being spotted."

"I got an idea," said Aisha. I blinked and tried to hide my start as my brain filled me in on her existence. Again. "Why don't we go to a motel or something and I'll steal the key for one of the rooms? The guy at the front desk will think it's been hired out, and we're golden for a day or so. Then we find another motel, rinse and repeat."

"And one of them will call the cops and give a description, and then Carol and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil will be all over our case," Amy said. "It's a bad idea."

"Worse than you think," Lisa retorted. "Coil's tapped into the PRT somehow. If he gets the slightest idea where we are, we're screwed harder than a dollar whore when the Navy's in town. He always guesses right, and he's got mercenaries with serious weaponry. We _don't_ want him on our case."

"Coil?" I asked curiously. "I don't think I've heard of him. What's his thing?"

Lisa shuddered. "He's a tall, skinny drink of water in a skintight outfit, and trust me, once you see him, you'll need brain bleach. He's also the worst type of person to get money or personal power." She gave me a direct look. _"You_ know the type."

I swallowed nervously. If I understood what she was saying correctly, he was meaner than Sophia and more vindictive than Emma. "I think I do. So what's his territory? So we can stay out of it, I mean."

"Oh, he doesn't hold much in the way of territory, actually," Lisa said dismissively. "You're not gonna believe this, but he's actually got this big-ass Bond villain base in the middle of … in the middle of …" Her voice ran down, and she shook her head. "Fuck. Is it that easy? It can't be that easy. Can it?"

"Lisa, are you all right?" I looked at her with some concern. If she was having some sort of brain meltdown, it would severely hamper any plans we were going to make in the future. I had no faith at all in my own plan-making ability. 'Run and hide' do not a long-term plan make.

Slowly, a grin spread across her face. "I'm either all right or totally insane. And I can't tell which. But I just had the _best_ idea. How to solve two of our problems at once."

Her grin seemed a little on the fixed side, so I wasn't making any sort of bets there. "What problems? And how are we going to fix them?" I hoped I wasn't going to regret asking.

"Problem one," Lisa said, her grin never disappearing. "Getting us long-term accommodations. Problem two. Making it so I can get around the city without Coil's goons simply grabbing me. And problem three. Someplace we can put people to keep them on ice if we have to go to Plan B and some get away."

Amy frowned. "Um, please don't tell me that this sudden inspiration is not related to what you were talking about earlier. Because if it is—"

"Holy garlic-flavoured fuckballs!" Aisha burst out and I jumped; more from the sudden exclamation than from the realisation that she existed. "We're gonna steal a _supervillain's fucking secret base!"_

"Wait, what?" I asked. "That sounds like—"

" _A totally epic idea that we should do right now!"_ Aisha interrupted, her voice crackling with enthusiasm. "I mean, there's all sorts of shit that's been stolen from everyone, but who else has actually fucking stolen the bad guy's _base?_ I mean, seriously?"

"Lisa?" Amy's voice was pleading. "Tell me that Aisha's on the wrong track, and that you're not thinking of going through with this insane plan."

Lisa looked at me and then at Amy. "It's not insane," she said firmly. "It's audacious, sure. Unprecedented, almost certainly. But not insane. You don't think it can be done?"

"Um, no?" I ventured.

Amy was far more forthright. "Fuck and _no!"_ she burst out. "Seriously, we're _four people,_ none of us really on our best game right now, and he's a _supervillain_ with _mercenaries!_ How in the living _hell_ do you think you'll pull this off?"

That was when I saw the one expression on Lisa's face that should've had me running for the hills. A slow, toothy smile. It morphed into a grin that would've made me take a step back if I'd been standing up. Even though she was standing up, she steepled her fingers in front of her like every criminal kingpin in every bad supervillain movie everywhere.

"I'm glad you asked."

* * *

 **Danny**

* * *

"You can't be serious." Danny stared at the Director. "Taylor has powers? How does that even _happen?"_

"I presume you've heard of trigger events," she replied firmly. "How capes get powers. But I'm guessing you don't know details. Not many people do, at least those who don't work directly with capes."

"I've heard the phrase from time to time," Danny admitted. "Not the details, no." He shook his head. "But how is it that my daughter gets powers on the same day that she's accused of stabbing a Ward to death? Is this a coincidence, or are these two events related?"

Director Piggot leaned back in her chair with her hands clasped in front of her. "It's not impossible that there's a connection between them. However, that raises an entirely different series of questions. You see, trigger events are almost universally linked to situations of extreme distress. And if she'd gone in there _intending_ to do harm to Shadow Stalker, she would've had a certain amount of readiness for the situation. The people who trigger aren't the ones who were mentally prepared for the situation."

Danny frowned, puzzling his way through the implications. "So ... you're saying she was subjected to extreme trauma, then she might have killed Shadow Stalker? She was attacked and she was defending herself?"

"The possibility exists." The Director took a deep breath. "And the longer I speak to you, the more I'm convinced that your daughter's got extenuating circumstances on her side. The trouble is, she's vanished. Clearing her and finding out what really happened—and possibly getting her signed up for the Wards—is going to be a lot harder if we can't talk to her."

Danny spread his hands. "Well, _I_ don't know where she is. I've been in custody since I found out about this whole shitshow."

"I know that." Piggot heaved herself to her feet. "Which is why I'm going to be signing your release form as soon as I get out of here. You're going home, so that if Taylor contacts you, you can contact _us._ We bring her in, find out exactly what happened from her side, and go from there."

"Um ... I guess?" Danny wasn't certain about all of this, but anything that allowed him to get out of here was a good thing. Nor was he fully on board with dropping a dime on Taylor, but he figured he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Director Piggot's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "Trust me, Mr Hebert. We'll sort this out."

* * *

 **Amy**

* * *

"You want me to make _what?"_ Amy stared at Lisa. "Now I _know_ you're insane. They'll _Birdcage_ me if I do that. Fuck, they'll give me a _kill order!"_ She could feel her heartbeat in her chest as she tried not to hyperventilate. _Could I get a heart attack from just being angry and scared?_ Vicky gave her a concerned look, and she forced a smile on to her face. The last thing she wanted was to have her damaged sister go battering-ram on Lisa right now, even though the blonde's plan was _totally bat-shit insane._ "It's all right, Vicky. We're just talking."

"All right," Vicky said cheerfully, and went back to staring into space and humming.

Amy lowered her tone, but didn't stop glaring at Lisa. "What the fuck are you _thinking?"_

Lisa gave her a smirk in return. "I'm _thinking_ that you've never used your powers to their full capacity, and if there was ever a time to start, it's right now. I'm _thinking_ that right now, our backs are to the wall and we're low on other options. I'm _thinking_ that this would be a perfect solution to our immediate problems, and make Operation Make Vicky Whole Again a lot more possible." Amy wasn't quite sure how she managed to slot those capitals in there, but she did. "And I'm _thinking_ that you're only protesting because secretly you really want to cut loose, but you've been conditioned to keep your power in check, and you want me to convince you otherwise."

Amy was reminded of the old saying: _Don't let the Thinker talk._ Her head was spinning, but Lisa's logic was worming its way into her head. The blonde was right on one count; their backs _were_ up against the wall. Amy was uncomfortably aware that every day of delay made it less likely that they'd be able to fix Vicky properly, and they were starting from zero resources.

"Oh," said Lisa sweetly, "and I'm _thinking_ that if I can take over Coil's finances—and I've got most of his passwords already—we'll have all the cash we'll ever need to pay Cranial. No other crimes needed. Hell, taking over his base won't really be a crime. Stealing from criminal assholes isn't really a crime, right?"

"But you want to _murder_ him," Amy said desperately. _"That's_ a crime." She looked at Taylor and Aisha, who were watching the discussion like it was a tennis match. Where Aisha had gotten the popcorn from, she wasn't sure. _"Tell_ her. Murder is _wrong."_

Taylor frowned. "Sure it's wrong, but she did kind of point out how Coil's really dangerous, and if we leave him alive, he'll come after us with everything he's got. And how he already wants to murder Lisa, or do even worse to her." She pointed at Vicky. "What do you think he'd do with her, once he got his hands on her? She doesn't know right from wrong, and she'll do anything if she thinks it's what you want."

"And whatever you think Coil _might_ do with Vicky, he'll do ten times worse." Lisa's tone was rock-solid sincere, far removed from her previous banter. "A totally compliant teenage girl who can bend steel in her bare hands? He'd cut off his arm to get her under his control. To get all of us under his control. I'm a _villain_ and I consider him too evil to live."

Amy looked at Vicky, then shuddered. The images that crowded through her mind made her want to puke. Her eyes went to Taylor, then to Lisa, and her shoulders slumped. "Okay," she muttered. "You win." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "I'm probably gonna regret the _fuck_ out of this, but let's do it. Let's go fuck up a supervillain."

"Woo hoo!" whooped Aisha, making Vicky jump. "Hey, it's okay, Vicks. We're all happy here. You happy, girl?"

Vicky smiled. "I am happy, Most Esteemed Aisha."

Amy glared at Aisha, who cheerfully ignored her. She was going to _have_ to do something about that nickname.

Lisa had that toothy grin back again, the one that sent shivers down Amy's back. "Excellent. Now, what's the most dangerous venom you can make a bug formulate?"

Amy shrugged. "Umm … I never really thought about it?"

Lisa sighed. "Aisha, are you up for a little research trip?"

* * *

 **Circus  
A Bit Later**

* * *

 _I should've held out for five times my usual fee,_ Circus decided. Every few minutes, she was reminded yet again of why she didn't do teams, and most especially teams with people who weren't hitting on all cylinders. Only the thought of the money kept her from saying 'fuck this shit' and walking away from the Undersiders' more dysfunctional members. She wasn't sure whether it'd been Grue or Tattletale keeping them pointed in the right direction, but whoever it was had to've had the patience of a goddamned saint.

Contrary to her concerns, it hadn't been too hard to convince them that they were working with, or maybe for, her now. All she'd had to do was march on into their base and wave Coil's name around like a flag. Apparently they hadn't known who he was, but a discreet reminder of how much they were being paid had sufficed to quell Regent's doubts. On the other hand, Bitch had needed a really blunt reminder.

Fortunately, getting them to come out with her to track down Tattletale hadn't even been that difficult, once she revealed the fact that they'd get paid a bonus to do it. As a villain, she was fully aware of how much her life choices revolved around how much money she'd get for a job; sometimes, it was depressing how little it took for people to throw over their previous friends and teammates. Which was another point in her book against being part of a team.

Despite being in civvies, Regent—who was surprisingly pretty under the mask—had wanted to bring along his sceptre. Circus had put her foot down and withstood the whining, the arguments, the counter-arguments and the sulking. It was a little weird, though. She was good at figuring out what people were feeling, but even when he was actually pissed off, Regent barely registered as being mildly irritated to her. She'd heard something about him having a flattened emotional response, but this was verging on the ridiculous.

Bitch pointed at the shuttered building ahead of them, where her dog was snuffling around a window frame. "She went in there."

"You're certain about that?" asked Circus. This seemed too easy.

Bitch glared at her. "My _fucking_ dogs tracked her _fucking_ scent to this _fucking_ location. Yes, I'm _fucking_ certain."

"So now we've found her," Regent interrupted, "can we have our bonus yet?"

"We get that bonus when Tattletale is in our hands, on the way back to the boss." Circus was pretty sure she'd made that point already. "Bitch, go around the back of the building and start growing your dogs. Leave me one. Regent, wait out here and stop her if she tries to leave. I'm going in."

Bitch gave her a hard look, but obeyed the order anyway. Circus went up to where the dog had been whining and scratching at the boarding over a window. Reaching into her hammerspace, she pulled out her mask and put it on. Then she produced a pry-bar from the same place—those things were _so_ damn handy—and lodged it behind one of the boards. Bracing herself, she heaved ... then nearly fell over backward as the board popped off with suspicious ease, then hung by the nail on the other end.

Glancing over her shoulder, she looked at Regent, but the pretty-boy was doing a good job at not snickering. Putting the pry-bar away, she pulled the rest of the boards off the window with her bare hands. As soon as the window was free, the dog whined and leaped up to scramble inside. Circus vaulted over the windowsill and followed him inside. She had a knife in each hand as she stalked through the building, but she was pretty sure Tattletale was no longer in residence. The noise she'd made getting in should've been enough to make the runaway Thinker bolt out the back door, right into Bitch's arms. This hadn't happened, so she decided to look around for clues as to where Tattletale might've gone.

The trouble was, she wasn't any sort of detective. Ironically, Tattletale would've been the ideal person to find the clues she was looking for. She just had to hope that the Thinker hadn't covered her tracks with the same level of capability.

It was the dog that found what she was looking for. She was examining scuffs in the dust when she heard it whining and scrabbling at something in the corner, under some trash. Lifting a broken board out of the way, she found paydirt. Four Fugly Bob's bags, crumpled up and shoved out of sight. The dog was pawing at them, obviously trying to get at the lingering smell and taste of grease and salt.

Taking the bags with her, she went outside again. The dog followed her, whining hopefully. Unrolling the bags, she looked in them for clues but only found scraps ... until she located the receipt. Leaning against the building, she sighed. "Okay, guys," she said. "It's a wash. We're pulling back until we can get more backup on this."

"What?" asked Regent. "Why?"

She held up the receipt. "Because four full-sized meals were eaten in here, at the same time. Tattletale isn't about to eat all that at once, so she's got backup from somewhere. And until we find out what that backup consists of, I've got to assume we're outnumbered. So, we're pulling back."

"Fuck," Regent said. "Does that mean no bonus?"

Circus rolled her eyes. _I am seriously not being paid enough for this._

* * *

 **Taylor**

* * *

"I don't believe we're actually doing this," I grumbled.

"Doing what?" asked Amy. "Attacking Coil?"

"No." Nor could I believe what I was going to say next. "That's logical, to keep us all safe. The only _other_ people who are looking for us are New Wave, and we _want_ them to come to us." I waved at the motel room we were sitting in. Well, _I_ was sitting in the only chair, while Vicky lay on the bed with Amy. Just to clarify: side by side, not touching each other. "No, what I can't believe is that we're actually using Aisha's plan to stay out of sight. And it's _working."_

Lisa popped her head out of the small bathroom. Like the rest of us, she was only wearing underwear. "You've had the option to shower and wash your clothes. We have _running water_ here. Are you honestly complaining?"

"Well, no, I'd be an idiot to," I agreed. "And I know it's only temporary. I just hate …" Again, I waved my hand around the room. " … not being _sure._ Not knowing what's going to happen next. If the cops or the PRT are gonna bust down the door any second." I shook my head. "I really don't know how career criminals do it. I'd go nuts in a day."

"Speaking as an ex-career criminal, I usually made sure to have a good hideout," Lisa informed me with a smirk. "But the good news is, between having Vicky wring the absolute fuck out of them and hanging up with the fan full on them, our clothes should be dry shortly. And then we can go back to not looking like a teen comedy fanservice shot."

"Not a moment too fucking soon," I muttered. I had enough body issues to keep a therapist busy for a week, and that was _before_ I had to take my clothes off in the same room as _Glory Girl._ My _inadequacies_ had inadequacies.

"Yeah, well, it's not like we can go shopping for skinny jeans right now," Lisa reminded me. "Any sign of Aisha yet? She should be getting back sometime soon."

This was one of the odd benefits of the current situation. I'd let the others know how I was able to control and sense through bugs most easily, but that even small animals would also work at a pinch. If I concentrated, I could look through a bird's eyes and make it go in a particular direction, but it took more of my attention. I could do bugs en masse with no effort at all, but their senses were _crap._ In any case, for some reason, my range seemed to be fluctuating from one block to two, depending on how antsy (pun intended) I felt. Which meant there were a lot of birds and rats I had out there, looking for Aisha's return.

"Not yet," I said, trying not to feel too concerned. "I've got a bird watching the bus stop, and nobody's got off yet who looks like her." I knew that meant nothing, but still …

Lisa and I looked around at the sound of a motorcycle entering the motel parking lot, then we glanced at each other. "Didn't she say something about owning a motorbike?" I asked.

"She did," Lisa agreed. "No sense in taking chances, though." Picking the small pistol up off the writing desk, she went over to the window and peered out through the drapes.

"Well?" asked Amy. "Is it her or not?"

In answer, Lisa went to the door and unlocked it. A moment later, it burst open, with a bike-helmeted Aisha framed in the doorway. "What up, beeyatches!" she yelled. Kicking the door shut behind her, she strode into the middle of the room like a conquering hero. In her left hand she held several fast-food bags, while in her right she had a rolled-up piece of paper. "Sorry I took so long. After I went to the library—and let me tell you, some of those funny cat videos are fuckin' _hilarious—_ I decided to go and pick up my ride. And then I wanted some munchies. Who's hungry?"

"Me!" said Vicky immediately, levitating off the bed and flying across the room to snatch two of the bags out of Aisha's hand. Heading back to the bed, she flopped on to it and handed one of the bags to Amy. "This one is yours," she said happily. Then she opened her bag and started investigating the contents.

Lisa sighed and massaged her forehead with finger and thumb, a gesture that I'd seen her use before with Aisha. "Did you at least do the research I asked you to do _before_ watching funny cat videos and getting your motorcycle, and going to Fugly Bob's?" she asked. I could hear the strained patience from where I was.

"Oh, sure," Aisha said, tossing me a bag. I caught it out of the air, my mouth already starting to water at the smell of grease and salt emanating from Vicky's and Amy's bags. "Got it right here." She waved the paper at Lisa. "Knew I'd forget all that shit if I didn't write it down, so I took notes."

"Oh, thank you, God," breathed Lisa. I got the impression she didn't necessarily trust Aisha's research dedication. She grabbed the paper and unrolled it, then winced. Looking over her shoulder, I saw where Aisha had scrawled "SECRET PLANS DO NOT LOOK" at the top of the page. "Really?" she asked. _"Really?"_

"What?" Aisha retorted cheekily. "We're gonna take down a supervillain, we need a secret plan. An' we don't want just any asshole looking at them, do we?"

"There are so many things wrong with that statement, I have no idea where to begin," she said, a look of pain crossing her face. "Okay, let's see what we've got so far." Unrolling the paper further, she began to read Aisha's scribbles. Or at least, I hoped she was able to read it. Aisha's penmanship had far more enthusiasm than accuracy going for it.

I left her to it and opened my fast-food bag. Just as I grabbed my first fries, however, a problem revealed itself to me. "Someone's coming," I said, pointing at the door. "I think it's the manager."

"Because _someone_ rode in loudly on a motorcycle and went straight to our door," Amy pointed out, proving the absolute clarity of hindsight. She scrambled off the bed, leaving her fast-food bag behind.

"Hey, not my fault if he's looking out the window!" Aisha protested. "And I gotta be noticed when I'm riding or some assclown will drive right over the fuckin' top of me!"

I concentrated on the guy coming up to the door. Bugs, I could control all day long. Rats and birds were much more of an effort. People I could _sort of_ influence if I really tried—I'd tried it on Lisa, with her permission—but it was a huge strain, and all I could do was nudge. If they wanted to go somewhere, they went there.

All the same, I pushed my will at his, trying to urge him to change his mind. This room really wasn't that important after all. He had better things to do.

For a long moment, he hesitated, and I thought I'd pulled it off. But then he shrugged and pulled his keys off of his waist. I grimaced as I felt the first stirrings of a headache. _Maybe I should've stung him with bugs or something._

We all heard the key enter the lock, and the _click_ as it disengaged. Lisa had her pistol half-raised, and Aisha was digging around in the bag she had slung over her shoulder. As the door swung open, Vicky flashed across the room, grabbed the manager by the front of his shirt and yanked him into the room. Her fist came up, then blurred down in a clubbing blow—

"No!" shouted Amy. "Vicky, don't!"

Her order came just in time; Vicky's fist swerved in mid-strike and smashed into the floor instead. I heard the _crack_ of concrete shattering from halfway across the room. Vicky looked up at Amy from where she was kneeling beside the prone manager. "Why not?" she asked. "He would tell people where we are."

"Yeah, but we can't just _kill_ him," I protested. I was fully aware of the hypocrisy of me supporting the eventual death of Coil, but this guy was basically an innocent. We had to find another way to deal with him. "Can we put him out so we can talk?"

"Okay, sure." Amy stepped forward and knelt beside the wide-eyed manager. Over forty and overweight, he had a large bald patch on his head and a large wet patch on his pants. Almost casually, she touched him on the side of the face and he collapsed, his eyes rolling back in his head. "What are we gonna do with him? Soon as he wakes up, he'll be blabbing to everyone that he saw Glory Girl in her underwear. If anyone listens to his story, it won't be hard to identify me as well. And as soon as _that_ gets out, New Wave will be on our asses."

"Okay, I know you're against fiddling with brains—" Lisa only got so far before Amy stood up abruptly.

"No!" she shouted. "Absolutely not! I am _not_ touching his brain! Bad things happen when I touch peoples' brains!" She pointed at Vicky. _"That_ happens!" There was a slightly hysterical note to her voice which told me she wouldn't be moved on that topic.

"You don't have to," I said, realising what we had to do. "There's ways to cause short-term memory loss with chemicals, right? You don't have to actually use your power on his brain."

Lisa blinked and stared at me. "Holy shit, you're right! If we make him the equivalent of blackout drunk, he'll forget the whole thing!" She turned back to Amy. "Do you have any problem with doing this to him?"

Caught on the spot, Amy grimaced. "I can induce his body to produce a chemical that will stop short-term memory from becoming long-term memory, sure. But I still don't like it."

"We're not exactly spoiled for choice right now," Lisa pointed out. "It's this, let him blab to everyone what he's seen, let Vicky smoosh him, or manually adjust his brain." She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. "Your choice."

"Fuck it," said Amy, kneeling beside the guy again. "This is probably gonna be the _least_ harmful thing I do all day." She put her hand on the guy's forehead. "Okay, his adrenals are now happily producing Rohypnol. I'll let it go on for … okay, that'll be enough to screw with the last five minutes of memory, once it hits his brain. Adrenals are back to normal, and he's gonna be out to it for the next twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes." Lisa and I looked at each other, then Lisa turned to Amy. "Can't we just … you know, keep him out for a bit longer? I'm kinda used to running water."

"No." Amy folded her arms. "I'm not going to violate this man's rights any more. We're going to leave him on the bed, and we're going to walk out of here in the next twenty minutes."

"Fuck," muttered Lisa. "Where are we going to go now?"

I cleared my throat. "I … might have an idea."

* * *

 **Danny**

* * *

 _I just want a shower,_ Danny told himself. _And then maybe bed for a few hours. After that ..._ He had no idea what was going to come 'after that'. By now he was seriously regretting the informal 'no cell phone' policy that Annette's death had brought on the family. Just to be able to _call_ Taylor and find out if she was okay would have been a tremendous relief. Or even talk to her and find out what _really_ happened.

But that wasn't going to be a thing until she showed up, either by contacting him or being brought in by the police. He steadfastly refused to consider any of the less pleasant options. They didn't exist so long as he didn't think about them.

"Is this the house here, sir?"

The PRT soldier doing the driving was wearing civilian gear, as were the other two in the car. They were discreetly armed, but all three had been unfailingly polite to him on the trip over. Which didn't detract from the highly irritating awareness that Piggot had put one over on him; the woman hadn't mentioned sending undercover operatives _with_ him until they were ready to go. Apparently, one of the releases he'd signed had given them the wherewithal to do so in legalese that he hadn't quite deciphered before he signed it. Personally, he blamed Piggot's 'good cop' act and his night of crappy sleep.

Worse, he didn't have any real grounds to deny them access. All the evidence they possessed placed Taylor _at_ the scene of Shadow Stalker's murder, quite possibly with her hand on the knife. A sufficiently vicious prosecutor could easily push the subsequent Empire-based slashing in her direction as well, and Danny's best defence in that case was "I don't think she'd do that". So all he could hope was that if Taylor did show up, they'd be sufficiently gentle in subduing her.

Of course, there _was_ the whole 'murdered a girl with bugs' aspect, which meant that 'sufficiently gentle' probably meant tasering then sedating. Piggot had assured him that there was _not_ a kill order out on his daughter—that required quite a bit more lead time, not to mention a whole slew of heinous crimes—so they weren't simply allowed to shoot her on the spot.

"Yeah, this is it." Danny nodded toward the driveway, where his car was still parked. "Pull in behind mine."

"No, not a great idea." The driver shook his head. "If she comes home and sees this car in the driveway, it might spook her. I'll just park around the corner." Suiting action to word, he pulled the car around the bend and came to a halt behind a beat-up old clunker. There was a motorcycle parked in front of the clunker, which made Danny frown slightly. He was fairly familiar with most of the vehicles that got parked around the neighbourhood, and these two were new to him. Of course, they definitely fitted in, and he _was_ tired, so it was probably nothing.

They got out of the car and walked back the short distance to the house. Danny let them in the side gate, then waved a few flies out of his face. He was aware that he smelled, but surely it wasn't _that_ bad. A bird shrieked discordantly, startling him, then swooped across the back yard and landed on the fence where it perched, watching him with bright eyes.

"Scared the shit out of me," muttered one of the PRT soldiers, making Danny feel a little better. He nodded toward the back door. "Got the key?"

"In my wallet," Danny said. He'd had his personal effects returned to him, so he dug out his wallet and retrieved the key. His eyes automatically went to the fake stone that concealed the spare key. Had it been moved slightly? He couldn't tell. In that moment, he made the decision not to mention it. No sense in letting these bozos know about the spare. Climbing the steps to the back door, he unlocked it and opened it. "You know, I'll be fine at home alone. If Taylor calls, I'll be sure to get in contact." He spoke loudly and firmly, making sure his voice echoed into the house.

"No can do, sir," the PRT soldier said firmly. "We have our orders." Which, of course, superseded anything Danny might want. They'd been polite enough to almost let him forget that, but the truth was always there if he really wanted to see it. He wasn't quite their prisoner, but nor were they strictly his guests. "Uh, hold out here a moment. Stafford, stay with Mr Hebert. Zabrinski, with me."

Danny's first impulse was irritation: _really? You have to search my home before you let me walk in? In what universe is Taylor a danger to_ _ **me**_ _?_ The second was mild embarrassment: _shit, I wish I'd had the chance to clean up first._ The third was: _fuck, I hope Taylor doesn't do anything rash if she_ _ **is**_ _home._

"Is this really necessary?" he asked out loud. "I mean, seriously?"

"Seriously, yes, sir," said the PRT guy. He reached inside his jacket and produced an automatic pistol. As he did so, Danny noticed a device in a pouch at his belt. Danny couldn't be sure, but it looked like a stun-gun to him. "Orders are to clear the house before we allow you entry. Remember, two people are dead."

"But they _attacked_ Taylor," Danny insisted. "Even if she was home, she wouldn't see me as a threat." _I can't say the same about you,_ he thought but did not say.

"All the same, sir, orders. Now wait here with Stafford." The PRT guy entered the house pistol held low, by his side. The one who he'd called Zabrinski followed him in. The door closed behind them, leaving Danny standing on the steps with Stafford.

If the tension hadn't been so high, it would've been boring. Standing on the back stairs of his own house, hoping against hope that Taylor hadn't come home and that he was mistaken about the placement of the rock. The bird was still on the fence, watching him. As he looked over at it, it squawked again.

Stafford ignored the bird as he reached up to press the earpiece he was wearing. "Zabrinski, say again?"

Two more birds landed beside the first, and Danny frowned. They were all looking at him. This wasn't typical bird behaviour, was it? He was sure that Piggot had said Taylor could control bugs, not birds.

Stafford was now tense. "Zabrinski, come in." A pause. "Graham, come in." He took a step away from Danny. "Zabrinski. Graham. Respond immediately or I'm calling in an emergency."

"What?" demanded Danny. "What's happening?"

"Step away from the house, sir," Stafford said, grabbing Danny by the arm.

At that moment, the back door opened; Taylor stood there.

* * *

 **Taylor**

* * *

We'd left the hotel manager snoring on the bed, and gotten dressed again in our still-damp clothing. I didn't care about the dampness; being _clean_ was wonderful. Aisha (of course) had suggested we steal his car. Amy only put up a token resistance to the idea, and I had zero fucks to give any more. It turned out that Lisa could drive. This didn't surprise me at all.

With Aisha trailing behind on her motorcycle, we'd followed my suggestion, which was simple. To go home. Dad should be at work by now, I figured, so we'd be able to sneak in using the spare back door key, and relax for a few hours. When he got in, I figured we'd be able to hide in my room for at least a bit. I honestly didn't know why I hadn't thought of it before.

The sight of Dad's car in the driveway gave me a bad moment, but there were enough bugs in the house to let me ascertain that he wasn't there. Where he was, I had no idea. I hoped he wasn't wandering the streets on foot, looking for me. Whatever; I was safe, and he was a grown man. I had to trust that he wouldn't do anything stupid.

The spare key was still in the fake rock beside the back door, and I let us in that way. Once inside, I heaved a sigh of relief and collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs. Of course, about thirty seconds later I spotted a bunch of guys coming in through the side gate. Some flies gave me the impression that the tallest one might be Dad, and I took control of a nearby bird which gave me a good look at him. I didn't know the guys with him, but they didn't look like anyone I knew. He wasn't in handcuffs, but he didn't seem to be very happy with them either.

I passed this on to Lisa, who immediately worked out the plan of action. It was _so useful_ having someone who could figure out what the enemy was likely to do in any given scenario. I was the ranged Master, so I went with her into the basement. Amy and Vicky went upstairs, while Aisha stayed in the living room (or at least, that was the last place I saw her).

Waiting under the basement steps with Lisa, I could 'feel' the men moving through the house. One guy went upstairs, and I saw him closing with where Amy and Vicky were hiding; in the bathroom, as far as I could tell. I concentrated on him and tried to direct his attention away from them. If I could distract him for even an instant …

The scuffle that followed was too fast for me to follow, but it ended with the intruder on the floor—still alive, for which I was grateful—and Vicky and Amy standing over him. The guy in the living room had wandered into the kitchen and was apparently looking at the basement door. Just as I whispered as much to Lisa, the guy convulsed and fell over.

That was my cue. There was only one guy left, and he was outside with Dad. I took the stairs two at a time as the guy tried to drag Dad down off the back steps. Jumping over the still-twitching guy at the top of the stairs, I opened the back door.

"Get back, Mr Hebert!" shouted the guy, letting go of Dad's arm and reaching into his jacket. I didn't think he was going for a hip flask, but he didn't know what was coming for him either. As the pistol cleared the holster, my birds hit him from behind. He recoiled as they flapped and beat at his face with their wings, screeching and slashing with their claws.

I grabbed Dad and hauled him inside, then stepped aside as Vicky came blazing past me. She yanked the guy with the gun back into the house, then Amy put him out. Dad looked down at the two unconscious agents, then at me.

"Taylor?" his voice was plaintive. "What's going on?"

"Hi, Dad," I said breathlessly. "I can, uh, I can explain?"

* * *

End of Part Five


End file.
